On Sat, 31 Dec 2011, Mark Zenier wrote:
> I'm enough of a packrat that I've still got the NTE _1990-1991 Technical
> Guide and Cross Reference_. (And a magnifying glass. And about a dozen
> boxes of databooks from about 1975 to 1995. Alas, few Japanese ones.)
>
> They were cheap or free at an NTE dealer (depending on how much business
> you did there), published every year or two. (The ECG and SK lines also
> had them, when they still existed). Cheap newsprint, about the same size
> as a Sear's catalog. Maybe they're still published. A ham swapmeet,
> EBay, or even a local (or university) library reference section could
> have one.
>
I remember getting a free HEP catalog about 1973. It was good since it
was a useful way to look up parts to get a general idea, at a time when I
didn't have many databooks. Even later, that sort of book continued to
be useful since it beat looking through all kinds of different books to
find the device.
I don't think I ever bought HEP parts, I knew from the start they were
expensive. Sam's had a transistor substition guide, but you had to pay
real money for it, and there were lots of other books to buy first.
The SK guide never seemed particularly useful, it seemed like a smaller
set of devices. Of course HEP started small, the first replacement guide
was much thinner than the second one I got a few years later, and I
remember often coming up blank for a lot of devices in the first HEP guide
I had. Radio Shack had a replacement line too, not sure if it was their
own making or they just took a subset of someone else's line. I got the
replacement guide cheap, but it was nver particularly useful.
I got an ECG replacement guide quite late, I don't know what happened
then. And then later found a later edition in some odd place like a used
book sale, or someone's recycling bin. They were much better than the HEP
line at its best.
I still have them, and the databooks I collected. It used to be so cmmon
for people to ask about old devices in the newsgroups, it's been some time
that it was common now.
I think ECG, or rather NTE now, gave up on the paper guide. They did
issue a CD for a while, but I think now you're stuck with the webpage that
has a means of doing a search. The times I've tried, I've not been that
successful, so maybe the line has been cut back. That's why it's still
useful to keep old paper books.
Of course, if someone is taking parts out of an existing piece of
equipment, it's often worth keeping the equipment intact, or at least
tracing out the circuit. Something like the ECG guide might have pinouts
for ICs, but what to do with them is not always clear. A working circuit
provides a sample circuit, and if you're going to use an IC in that way,
might as well keep it intact, often the parts surrounding it are exactly
what you need.
Michael