Just got my kit, and for the first project the guide asks for me to connect the voltage regulator vertically into pins 28, 29, and 30. It simply will not fit. I made sure not to push down too hard, but looking closely at the pins on the breadboard I see that the rails have vertical slits inside but the rest have horizontal slots and therefore it is impossible to securely connect the regulator vertically (I can get it vertically in the rails and horizontally in the rest, but not the other way around as the instructions call for and the picture shows). What am I missing here?

Hi Schafer,

What do you mean by vertical slits? I am using the same breadboard and mine fits perfect. I think you might need to push the voltage regulator pins down a little bit harder. If it doesn't fit in those pins you can use the other available pins and use a longer wires to connect the voltage regulator with the power rail. But you need to be careful on how to connect the regulator's pin to the power rails. Looking down to the regulator from top the most right pins has to be connected to your positive power rail (which is the red one) the middle pin goes to the ground (the blue rail in your board) and the far left pin has to be connected to the positive pin of your power supply (which is the positive pin of your 9 Volt battery)

I hope this helps.

Ermias

The voltage regulator pins are a bit thicker than those on most of the other parts in the Nerdkit and you may need to apply a little more force to get it to slide down into the breadboard. But it shouldn't cause any harm to the breadboard.

It may cause some slight bending of the breadboard contacts which could cause wire ends to fit in those holes a little more loosely if you re-use them for something else later, but it shouldn't case any significant amount of un-usability.

Ahh, pushing it even harder worked! Thought I was going to break it because of how hard I was pushing, but with more effort it fit in. Thank you both!

A little trick is to take a pair of wire clippers and put a point on the ends of the leads. This gives them a better shot at going in with less force.