Paul:

Do not use one of these types of things....



....for your microcontroller prototype. Yes 12 MHz is a high frequency when considering one if these plug wire boards. The bus to bus capacitance from a 5 hole string to the adjacent 5 hole string will do an excellent job of coupling 12 MHz signals. You will also get LOTS of coupling from pin to pin just due to the fast rise times of the modern day types of CMOS microcontrollers.

You would be far far better off to purchase a ready made PC board type of evaluation board. Or build something along the lines Charles showed you. You would even be far better off to build a prototype along these lines as opposed to using a wire plug board.



Michael Karas