Initial comments:
- There is something really funky going on with the plating on the leads. It seems to be scaling off, which is not a happy thing.
- If I were to guess, the 1871 has a "fair" chance of being a date code, week 18 of 1971
- any "diode like thing" with "5.1V" associated with it make me think of a zener diode
- Just to make the above confusing, an old glass enevlope diode with "...92" written on it makes me think OA92, a very common germanium diode.
Obviously the last two clues are quite contradictory - so at least one and likely both of the above clues are wrong!
The only sensible advice from here is to test its forward and reverse breakdown.
- Take a power supply (say 15V - or a 9V battery if you have one laying around).
- Measure the voltage of the power supply / battery using your DVM
- Put a resistor in series with the positive lead. (any value from say 1K to 100K will do - 10K is ideal). This acts as a current limit.
- Connect the diode from the power supply negative to the open end of the current limiting resistor.
- Measure the voltage across the diode using a DVM
- Try this with the diode "forwards" and "backwards".
If you get:
- The full supply voltage one way, and 0.6V +/- 0.1V the other way you have a silicon diode
- The full supply voltage one way, and 0.3V +/- 0.15V the other way you have a germanium diode
- 5.1V +/- 1V one way and a low voltage the otehr way you have a 5.1V zener
Else I have no idea what you have.
Bottom line though: Any component with skanky plating like that is likely to give you grief in use. Diodes are super cheap. With the possible exception of some really old germanium devices - but even then I am not convinced I would want to use them.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
