Author Topic: First IC you came in contact with?  (Read 29350 times)

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Offline Richard Crowley

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #25 on: May 14, 2015, 04:50:16 pm »
I remember as a very young lad playing with the very first widely-available transistor, the Raytheon CK-722 in a lurid blue plastic case


 

Offline Seekonk

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #26 on: May 14, 2015, 07:32:16 pm »
GE RA1 if that qualifies as a chip.
 

Offline rolycat

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #27 on: May 14, 2015, 07:52:47 pm »
This Ferranti ZN414 AM radio receiver:


 
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Online tautech

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #28 on: May 14, 2015, 08:05:24 pm »
I remember as a very young lad playing with the very first widely-available transistor, the Raytheon CK-722 in a lurid blue plastic case
AC117 in a Philips electronic kit for me.

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Offline wemme

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #29 on: May 14, 2015, 08:09:28 pm »
I first had a zn414 also. Was in a dick Smith kit when I was a kid. 
 

Offline Silveruser

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #30 on: May 14, 2015, 08:25:18 pm »
First ics 7400 family, first CPU 8008 with RAM by the square foot????
 

Online rsjsouza

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #31 on: May 14, 2015, 08:27:02 pm »
In the early eighties my dad already had a good selection of CMOS, TTLs and linear ICs, but one of the first IC-based projects was using a CD4011 from Signetics - a "perpetual" LED blinker, followed by sequential LED blinkers using cascaded CD4017 ICs.

The first programmable device was a Z80 inside a TK82C from Microdigital (ZX81 Brazilian clone).

As for the first transistor, probably a BC547 or an AC126 (on a Philips Electronics kit).
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Offline jlmoon

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #32 on: May 14, 2015, 08:32:19 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..

Fairchild uA709's, remember them well  they were Round (~3/8" diam) with  shiny black epoxy tops and white sidewalls with a index flat and had red and black printing and gold leads.   I think these were the very first gen 709's that were ever created.  I can't remember if the F8 processor was before or after my experience to the 709.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2015, 08:36:16 pm by jlmoon »
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Offline retrolefty

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #33 on: May 14, 2015, 08:33:52 pm »
Original 7400 series ICs in 1970.

 

Offline AG6QR

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #34 on: May 14, 2015, 08:47:52 pm »
During my second year of college I came into fairly close contact with the Z-80 microprocessor (programming it in assembly using a Northstar Horizon), the 741 op-amp (tinkering with a Radio Shack kit for an audio reverb effects machine), and many members of the 74LS series of TTL logic (in a computer architecture class, with lots of labs, involving wiring together gates to make a CPU).  I can't quite remember which of those was first, but they were all nearly simultaneous for me.  The 555 was in there somewhere, too.
 

Offline atferrari

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #35 on: May 14, 2015, 09:07:34 pm »
Coming from a successful building of a 80-40 m Xmtr with valves / tubes, after being given a non-working board (full of CD4000 CMOS chips) imitating the Big Ben (?!), I ended buying some CD4017 immediately followed by some CD4001 IIRC. Analog multimeter to understand what high and lows were. Totally confused when I heard that they used a "clock" to work.  :wtf:

My 1st micro programmed manually in Assembler, the Z80 inside a Timex Sinclair 2068. My first micro programed on a protoboard, an 8052 driving a 2x16 LCD. My first micro programmed soldered to something, a 16C57.

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Offline rx8pilot

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #36 on: May 14, 2015, 09:17:17 pm »
7400

1985 - 11 years old.
Sole supplier of parts and tools: Radio Shack
Sole supplier of information: Radio Shack and the public library.

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Offline N2IXK

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #37 on: May 14, 2015, 10:39:11 pm »
Pah. You can build a 7400 with a bunch of 741s but you can't build a 751 with a bunch of 7400s :)

Believe it or not, you can operate TTL logic with resistive feedback from the output to the input to bias a gate to act as an analog amplifier.  Never tried it, but details are in the AoE(?).

Another chip I have fond memories of playing around with was the SN76477 analog synth-on-a-chip. Could make some pretty funky sounds with one of those.  There was a later simplified version in a 16 pin package the SN94281.



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Offline smjcuk

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #38 on: May 14, 2015, 10:52:43 pm »
Pah. You can build a 7400 with a bunch of 741s but you can't build a 751 with a bunch of 7400s :)

Believe it or not, you can operate TTL logic with resistive feedback from the output to the input to bias a gate to act as an analog amplifier.  Never tried it, but details are in the AoE(?).

That's my weekend project sorted :)
 

Offline JacquesBBB

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #39 on: May 14, 2015, 11:18:37 pm »
If I do not count computers, where I was not directly in contact with the IC, even if I could program the 6800 in assembly language, the first IC I directly came into contact is the

Atmega328, in an Arduino UNO,  only a little bit more than  two years ago.

I was surprised to see how simple it was to interface with this IC through the arduino IDE.
 

Offline GreyWoolfe

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #40 on: May 15, 2015, 12:55:24 am »
My first chip that I physically touched was an AMD 486 chip when I built my first computer instead of patching up hand me downs with hard drives and memory.  I paid a fortune for 2-4MB ram chips.  That was a good little computer in it's day.  The first chip in circuit at ITT Technical Institute was a 555.  I used a 556 for a siren/ flashing LED circuit for my first quarter project using blue LED's that cost about $2 USD each (6 of them) and built the circuit into a Ohio State Trouper Interceptor model that had 4 LEDs on the roof, 2 in the headlights and 2 red for the tail lights.

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Offline Howardlong

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #41 on: May 15, 2015, 01:17:25 am »
As I remember it back in the mid 70s I was in denial about ICs, it wasn't proper electronics, a bit like these days Lego isn't proper Lego because of all the specially fabricated parts, it's cheating!
 

Offline ludzinc

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #42 on: May 15, 2015, 01:34:11 am »
555 *AND* 4017 counter.

Dick Smith Electronic Dice kit.

Best 13th birthday present ever.  (Also came with crappy mains cord soldering iron, and moving coil multi-meter).
 

Online coppice

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #43 on: May 15, 2015, 02:16:48 am »
1968 in high school. Our physics teacher obtained a quantity of Motorola MC790 series RTL chips in those new fangled plastic 14 and 16 pin DIPs. There were NOR gates, inverters and JK flip-flops. We made some interesting things with those.
 

Offline rx8pilot

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #44 on: May 15, 2015, 03:15:25 am »
1968 in high school. Our physics teacher obtained a quantity of Motorola MC790 series RTL chips in those new fangled plastic 14 and 16 pin DIPs. There were NOR gates, inverters and JK flip-flops. We made some interesting things with those.

Were those the steam powered chips?  :-DD
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Online coppice

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #45 on: May 15, 2015, 03:17:22 am »
1968 in high school. Our physics teacher obtained a quantity of Motorola MC790 series RTL chips in those new fangled plastic 14 and 16 pin DIPs. There were NOR gates, inverters and JK flip-flops. We made some interesting things with those.

Were those the steam powered chips?  :-DD
No. 3.6V powered chips, like all the cool modern stuff.
 

Online hans

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #46 on: May 15, 2015, 04:22:21 am »
555 timer + 4017 logic ic.
 

Offline Richard Head

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #47 on: May 15, 2015, 06:18:08 am »
+1 for ZN414. It was like a crystal set on steroids. I built it into a "Tic-Tac"box. That was early 70's.
 

Offline Tandy

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #48 on: May 15, 2015, 08:48:20 am »
This thread raises an interesting related question of how you got started and for many it will be the opposite way round today compared to 20 or 30 years ago. I started out with simple circuits and took a while to before I first got to experiment with an IC. For me; like many it was a 555 timer, at school in fact.

Now people are likely to do it the other way round, start out with a microcontroller board to do something interesting and then later progress to learning about fundamental electronic principles as their interest develops.
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Offline atferrari

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Re: First IC you came in contact with?
« Reply #49 on: May 15, 2015, 09:28:14 am »
Caused me to built a 10 Amp PSU because of their power consumption.

As much as TTL, Dave, or even more? Never used them.

I started with CMOS and almost immediately bought a masive list of TTLs.
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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, however, there is.
 


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