@bitwelder:
So? There's a light bulb in a San Francisco firehouse that's over 100 years old and still glowing. The only components I've run into that have a shelf life are capacitors. And don't get me started on the astronomical prices audiophile musicians are paying for old JRC op-amps for their rigs.
@mark-r:
You're spot-on with that meter, but I don't see any tactile elements on the top of the blue things (there seem to be small black spots on the bottoms, though - maybe the leads were bent in the wrong direction?).
@Ionized:
Could you ohm out those blue things? Maybe pull any numbers off of them?
Also, those two yellow-tan colored DIPs in your IC collection are NOT ICs - they're resistor packs/arrays. The 14/16 is the pin count, don't know what the middle 001/002 is (maybe the internal connection type), and the 331 = 330 ohms.
See my attached diagram of how they're used, and how to test your meter.
And because I know you're going to ask, those "flameproof" resistors are now called "Fusistors". If I remember this correctly, RCA had a chasis that had this nasty habit of burning down people's houses (CTC-24/25?). Anyway, they traced the problem to a power resistor that got so hot it ignited, burned, and set fire to other components in the vicinity. They set fire to their friends, and so on, and so on - next thing you know, you've got a Charlton Heston action thriller. I seem to remember an article in either Radio Electronics or Popular Whatever that showed how to build a fire alert system for your TV.
So, RCA designed a resistor with a built-in fuse that would open before it got even close to the ignition point, thus it was "flameproof". You don't see them much anymore, as power levels have dropped to the point that this problem seldom occurs (except in China). It's still nice to have a few 2 or 5 watters lying around...
nop