frequency meter

[hopeless]

Hello
Can some one help me please, I am a antique sprog on this lark so have pity on me , I have been trying to build a rev counter I have been following a quite simple circuit but so far no success, I built one it did not work I built another one checked each one lots of times still no luck so I built one on a bread board and it worked so I built another just with with wires but that did not work and I have been checking time and time again the only thing that I cannot test is the read out, so could some one tell me how to do that in case that has broke.
Thank you for any help, Hopeless