DIODES !
OK, several hours doing vintage diode archeology non-stop later... I am done now.... out of 27 stud diodes, and a dozen different part numbers, I have only 3 that I can't find any data on.
Half of the stuff was branded " SILEC ", so I have done some SILEC archeology.
Looks like it was a French semi conductor company doing mostly diodes. Then they renamed themselves " SSC ", standing for " SILEC Semi Conductors ", fair enough.
Then looks like they got taken over by a bigger fish, Thomson-CSF, then SGS-Thomson, aka " ST " these days of course.
After much Googling, an interesting datasheet website kept coming up :
https://www.datasheetarchive.comMany times when Google failed to find anything, this website found me a page in an old scanned catalogue, with a line about the part I was researching, hence saving my bacon.
Sadly most of the time they give you only the one single page of the catalogue that contains your part... they don't give you a download link to go get the entire catalogue it was extracted from. That's a bit of a bummer, but hey, it's free so you can't complain can you. However that site did serve me a complete catalogue when I was searching for type " 306Z4 ". Catalogue is not from a manufacturer, it's a compilation of data with cross indexes. The front page does not say who edited that catalogue but the footer on some pages bears a logo that reads " DATA ". Just... " DATA "... so some company that was called.... " DATA ".. hu...why not. Rings a bell ??
Catalogue is from 1966 and has no less than 786 pages ! The cross indexes take up lots of space at the beginning of the catalogue, and actual data / tables start only at page 178.
It's not OCR'ed so if my elusive 306Z4 part is in there... might take me a life time to find it !
Had I the paper / hard copy of that catalogue, would be simple enough to flick through it... but doing the same on my 15 year old computer is no fun at all.... will try anyway.
Found another catalogue as well, direct courtesy of Google this time. SILEC / SSC catalogue from 1977. again no OCR, but colour though. 97 pages of vintage diode porn.
Somehow I enjoy looking at these old catalogues and datasheet immensely. It's like archeology. Looking at these old documents is like a time machine that immerses you in the fun and exciting days of this emerging new tech called electronics. I just love the look of these old documents, they are just nice. I feel I am growing fond of them very fast, it's like a virus spreading... just like it happened for Vintage TE when I bought my first glowing Tek 5 years ago. Look where I am now !
I think I will try to find actual paper copies of every old catalogue I can find... I wonder where I could find these things.
My old retired EE friend 150kms away used to have a semi truck worth of catalogues, gathered in the '70s and '80s mostly, when he was most active in R&D, but he threw half of them away to make space !!!
Well that still leaves him with half a semi worth.. Maybe he can give me a few to appease my appetite for old paper....
Anyway. So out of 27 stud parts, I discovered more diversity than I thought I would ! It's not just big mundane / regular diodes.
No, I have Schottky in the lot (SD41 and MBR6035, both Motorola) and also 10 Watt Zener diodes (GZ12A, PZ12A and PZ27A, respectively 12V and 27V as one could guess....all from SILEC) and even a TRIAC ( SC40D , General Electric) !
OK so this evening I guess main job is to search the 786 pages of that 1966 DATA catalogue to see if I can find that 306Z4, wish me luck !