Author Topic: First IC you came in contact with?  (Read 29354 times)

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Offline BlofeldTopic starter

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First IC you came in contact with?
« on: May 14, 2015, 12:32:55 pm »
Post the first IC that you came (conciously) in contact with. Either using it in a circuit, or (in case it was a microprocessor or -controller) programming it in assembly. I guess it would be boring to talk about an x86 that just executed the stuff you programmed in a high-level language.

In my case it was the LM324. It was sitting on a socket (as can be seen in the pic) as part of the Kosmos E200 electronics kit (year was 1980).

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Online mikeselectricstuff

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2015, 12:40:14 pm »
LM3909 LED flasher. This was back when LEDs were cool, flashing ones more so, especially from a 1.5v battery!
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Offline niflheimer

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2015, 12:59:54 pm »
555 timer.
 

Offline Mechanical Menace

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2015, 01:06:35 pm »
I can't remember if I became intimate with the 6502 or Z80 first, though at a guess I'd say the 6502. The one I knew best and can remember most nowadays though is the 68000.

EDIT: The 68000 was the first thing I ever took a soldering iron to too...
« Last Edit: May 14, 2015, 01:11:26 pm by Mechanical Menace »
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Offline technix

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2015, 01:11:16 pm »
TA7642 single chip AM receiver/amplifier. Although that chip is in TO-92 package hence does not look like one.

The first IC-shaped chip is 74LS00 and LM358 from a kit I owned in primary school.

Then in college I am greeted with the antithesis of TA7642 packaging: IRF7401, which is a single MOSFET in a chip-like SO-8 package.


Nope I remembered the first chip I ever came in physical contact with: Intel i486DX. Ceramic PGA with a gold-colored cap and gold plated pins (ouchie)

If the chip survives to this day I will try to design a board embedded style with that as its brain and boot a Linux kernel off it.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2015, 02:06:46 pm by technix »
 

Offline smjcuk

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2015, 01:12:52 pm »
First contact with: 1458.

First penetrating foot injury from: 1458 (about an hour later)
 
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Offline deephaven

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2015, 01:18:28 pm »
TO5 canned logic can't remember if they were RTL or DTL. Could only get JK flip flops and 2 input NOR gates. I made a 625 line SPG with some and also a caption generator using a load of reject 1N4148 diodes for the character ROM.
 

Offline N2IXK

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2015, 01:19:33 pm »
Another vote for the LM3909., followed shortly by the 555 timer and various 7400 series logic chips. All found on the pegboards at the local Radio Shack in the late 70s.
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Offline philipz

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2015, 01:22:27 pm »
When I was young (35 years ago) I made for my bicycle siren with SN7400.
 

Offline BlofeldTopic starter

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2015, 01:28:24 pm »
I can't remember if I became intimate with the 6502 or Z80 first, though at a guess I'd say the 6502. The one I knew best and can remember most nowadays though is the 68000.

EDIT: The 68000 was the first thing I ever took a soldering iron to too...

In my case it was the 6510 that was used in the C64. It was a close relative of the 6502.

At about the same time I was drooling over a manual of the 68000, it seemed to be such a cool architecture. When I actually got a 68000 (inside an Atari ST 1040) a few years later there was so much distraction (I was studying EE, was learning Modula-2 on the ST 1040, playing with the flight simulator, there was so much free software for it....) that I hardly did any programming in assembly of the 68000. And I never dared to approach them with a soldering iron.
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Offline Mechanical Menace

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2015, 02:13:53 pm »
And I never dared to approach them with a soldering iron.

Too young to be know any better. I had a 520STFM and I got one of them 4 meg ram upgrades that came with a board that could take 4 1 meg simms, at the time it was amazing lol. I can't remember what but something hooked straight up to the CPU instead of the MMU and that's where I started.

In the long run it ended up with a blitter, fpu, switchable TOS versions etc, etc. Still works to this day even if the keyboard and case aren't very well.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2015, 02:17:20 pm by Mechanical Menace »
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Offline ciccio

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #11 on: May 14, 2015, 02:28:00 pm »
It was in 1967 or 1968. A metal can op-amp (I believe it was a uA709, but I'm not sure, the UA741 came later), in the school lab.
We built a log amplifier, and the teacher was screaming us: "this device cost an arm and a leg, so please be really careful".
We used a socket, so the IC will not be damaged by our "fire sticker" soldering iron with pure copper tip, to be filed before each use, and then the IC could be saved and used by other students.
Good memories..
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Offline BlofeldTopic starter

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #12 on: May 14, 2015, 02:52:13 pm »
It was in 1967 or 1968. A metal can op-amp (I believe it was a uA709, but I'm not sure, the UA741 came later), in the school lab.

Was this any sort of engineering school or a "normal" school? They never let us play with electronics in school. I have dim memories of handling an oscilloscope in class once. But I think we were just looking at the output of a signal generator, no memories of building any circuits there, I did all this at home. The school had, however, several Apple II, and we could not only use them in class but pretty much everytime in the afternoon as long as a teacher was in the building.
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Offline Howardlong

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2015, 03:05:28 pm »
7400, and none of your lightweight LS nonsense either,  around 1976.
 

Offline zapta

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #14 on: May 14, 2015, 03:06:15 pm »
7400. In high school, the digital electronic teacher started the class with a statement that any digital circuit can be built with nand gates only. The first circuit we built with the 7400 was a RS flip flop.

In another class we learned about the 741 but the 7400 beats the 741 any day of the week. ;-)
 

Offline smjcuk

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #15 on: May 14, 2015, 03:08:32 pm »
In another class we learned about the 741 but the 7400 beats the 741 any day of the week. ;-)

Pah. You can build a 7400 with a bunch of 741s but you can't build a 751 with a bunch of 7400s :)
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #16 on: May 14, 2015, 03:14:44 pm »
TBA120 MF amplifier out of a Barco Chassis 27 TV set , probably around 1978 ...  was a grey ( not black) thingie made by semicron and had staggered pins. 

every schipmaker at that time made that chip. ITT , TI , Philips, Siemens, Telefunken , Semicron , Semtech , Signetics, Thomson , SGS   you name it.
Almost every TV set used this thing as IF amplifier and quadrature detector.
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Offline klr5205

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #17 on: May 14, 2015, 03:16:41 pm »
I THINK a 555 timer was probably my first but just for an afternoon hobby experiment at a young-ish age.

The first chip I ever spent real time with was programming a PIC16F887. First in assembly, and then in C.
 

Offline zapta

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #18 on: May 14, 2015, 03:36:10 pm »
In another class we learned about the 741 but the 7400 beats the 741 any day of the week. ;-)

Pah. You can build a 7400 with a bunch of 741s but you can't build a 751 with a bunch of 7400s :)

But I can simulate them with 7400s  ;-)
 

Offline eliocor

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #19 on: May 14, 2015, 03:37:23 pm »
7413 Dual Schmitt quad NAND for building an RC oscillator...
 

Offline smjcuk

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2015, 03:43:16 pm »
In another class we learned about the 741 but the 7400 beats the 741 any day of the week. ;-)

Pah. You can build a 7400 with a bunch of 741s but you can't build a 751 with a bunch of 7400s :)

But I can simulate them with 7400s  ;-)

With 7400s built out of 741s!

I think we're both losing this one :)
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #21 on: May 14, 2015, 03:52:26 pm »
The Fairchild 709 Op Amp....
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Offline Refrigerator

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #22 on: May 14, 2015, 03:53:36 pm »
My first contact with an IC was when i opened my little tetris handheld console, the pcb itself was double sided with wide vias in which i used to stick random components from an old TV board i found in the garage.
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Offline Kibi

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2015, 04:22:53 pm »
My first was a plastic 741.
I have a metal can 741 which I keep in a safe place.
 

Offline Dave Turner

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #24 on: May 14, 2015, 04:26:34 pm »
1968 IC-10 audio amplifier.

A handful of second hand RTL logic chips in about 1967. Caused me to built a 10 Amp PSU because of their power consumption.
 


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