DIODES1H20 AM, I am finally done organizing my diodes, after spending countless hours identifying them and downloading datasheets.
Deciding how to organize them is even more difficult, because you need to make choices.... identifying them is a chore and takes forever, but it's somehow relaxing, there are no choices to be made, no stress... you just go through them one by one and that's all.
Anyway, tried to compromise as always between putting them all in one big bag... no, or using up an entire drawer unit, nope either.
So at the end the compromise was two plastic boxes and only 4 drawers.
The small axial stuff bagged, in the plastic containers, with a few cardboard dividers to help of course :
Box #1
- Small Signal
- Germanium
- Zener < 10V
- Zener >= 10VBox #2
- Rectification <= 1A
- Rectification > 1A
- Fast Avalanche
- SchottkyDrawers, sorted by prefix
#1 : 1 , 1N
#2 : BY , F
#3 : G , D , S
#4 : NO ID, couldn't find neither a datasheet nor even basic specs in a short form catalog.Spreadsheet below.
Retrospectively, I kinda enjoyed searching all that... reading all these datasheet, old and modern, about all kinds of diodes of all kinds of ratings...
- You get a feel for what parameters are typical for each type, ballpark.
- You get to learn about old manufacturers long defunct, or still alive but that you never had heard before.
- You get to see all the BS in the datasheets, and how marketing sometimes appears to be writing the datasheet rather than the technical people. Most notably the overwhelming use of the buzz word " ULTRA FAST " diodes. Used and abused, so much so that it doesn't mean anything anymore and I stopped taking any notice of it. It's just a marketing buzzword nothing more... It looks like the marketing dept were all very afraid that if you didn't put "ULTRA FAST "on the cover page, nobody would buy your diodes.... It's so bad that even a big name like Vishay, no less, in one datasheet, stated in huge bold characters ULTRA FAST at the top of the datasheet and..... nowhere in the datasheet does it tell you how fast it is !!
Engineers don't need to know... buying dept bought some "ULTRA FAST" diodes, surely they should be alright !
- You get to learn what kind of part number is out there, and how they are "formed", how different manufacturers code parameters into their part numbers, there is variety out there.
BUT !!!! But.... by far the most useful thing I got out of all this, spending so many hours researching diodes... is that I will never.. never... never misspell freaking
SCHOTTKY ever again !!!!
Oh boy, was worth it just for that !