Oops... I got carried away.... no I am not going to move on to sorting the ICs. Just remembered I had a couple bins of more trannystors to sort first !
TO3 and TO220 packages. some salvaged and usable (long enough legs), but motly intact legs so must be old stock.
At least these packages are easier to grab and to read the part number from, than all these pesky TO92 I just sorted.
Downside is... this sea of TO220 is most likely to be just as many different part numbers, will take me 3 days to pull all their respective datasheets to figure out what each and everyone of them
is !!!!
Good side is... well, more varied stuff in my stock to play with !
OK I have finally finished sorting the pile of TO220 packages, see spreadsheet below.
Countless hours spent. almost 200 packages to go through. 95% of the stuff I was able to find a datasheet for, or at least basic specs from old scanned catalogues.
The remaining 5% was either impossible to identify, or legs too short, or identified but deemed useless because way too specialized.
Result is nice, as I have a bit of everything really !
NPN
NPN Darlington
PNP
N-MOS
P-MOS
Diodes
Triac
Thyristors
Vreg linear, fixed and adjustable, even a few LDO ones. Even a fixed 9.3V one, what a weird voltage that is, I wonder what use case it was meant for ?!
Vreg switching, just one.
Even have a few audio amps ! No not at all into audio stuff, but I have a box full of random speakers, and one could use a little speaker in some project who knows, so I don't mind playing with a little amp and crappy speaker. They are all TDA, mono output. A TDA 2030A (18Watts) and a TDA2052 (30Watts). I have two of the latter so I could make a stereo something or another
Have a couple beautiful vintage Triacs : SC141D and SC142D, in gorgeous colourful packages, blue and red, with gold plated legs that are round rather the usual flat. I just love them
Also have a few that I could not find any info on, despite being clearly identified and from a major brand... Texas Instruments.
1) PT1080B . Chinese tester says it's a NPN.
2) PT6009 - Chinese meter reacts to it the same way as it does whenever I stick a NPN Darlington into it : shows a ridiculously low hFE, like 20 or something instead of thousands. Also shows a diode between Collector and Emitter, as Darlington datasheets often show. So, I take it it's an NPN Darlington.
So I could play with that on the Tek 575 Curve tracer once it's going.
Also : I have a couple NPN that I am not 100% sure if the first letter is 'C' or a partially rubbed off 'D'. The rest of the number (4 digit) is the same : "1985".
So I don't know if I have one D1985 and one C1985, or two C1985 or two D1985.... full part number for these is 2SC1985 / 2SD1985. Both exist, both are NPN (chinese tester confirms that)
Both are rated at 60Volts.. however one is rated at 10MHz (6 amps) and the other 30MHz (3 amps). So it could be fun to play with them a bit and try to test their bandwidth to try to see which is which ?!
MOSFETs : had none in my previous sorting session, the old stock from my Dad's work place. So... I am glad that in this random box of TO220 packages I DO have some !
Quite a few actually ! Most are of course very old, with Rdson greater than one ohm, but I do have some more modern ones rated at about one ohm or less. Like, I have a few IRF630 in various guises, at 0.4ohms and no less than x8 2SK2461 rated at 20A and 0.1ohm.
So that's cool, I have quite a few MOSFET's to play with now.
99% of them are N-channel though, have only two that are P-channel ! Same with BJT's, NPN types are clearly more numerous than PNPs.
Also have one Thyristor, type 17127A that I have no datasheet or even any specs on it. All I could find out is that... it's a Thryristor. So I could play with it to try to figure out its basic specs and pinout. No, I am not gonna spend 100+ Euros on the Atlas PEAK SCR tester !
Gonna be on the breadboard and that's it. Need to be educational fun... don't want to be spoon fed nor spend any money on that "project"...
So quite happy with that overall. Was a real chore to do but I now have a bit of everything to play with, was well worth it. In total have downloaded and archived 120+ datasheets.
Next step : the bigger packages now, other than the TO3 I mean, as I have already sorted those the other day. x30 IC's or so to research. I assume most of them are specialized for old CRT TV or monitor so will not be of any use/interest, but maybe some are general purpose enough that I could potentially decide to keep them. We shall see.