Thousands of old ICs

[jord4231]

So a good 6 or so months back I was playing on gumtree and found a forsale post "electronics"
The add went something like too much stuff to list...
The photo was one terrible photo of a small box of resistors.
So me being me I couldn't help my self I had to go down and check it out. 20 mins later I filled my van full of stuff.

Loads off stuff and few nice old meters and a big old eeprom machine too...

Anyway the resistors caps etc is all handy and a life time supply
But what about all these old IC's there is thousands of them those draws are full

I've started documenting the stuff in the attached excel file. I've still got another two big tubs full of IC's all in packaging that I need to add to this file just so I know what I've got.
Lot of z145xx series Lots of 74xx series, the big tub that I'm yet to document has LM series stuff in it.
The Z145xx and 74xx are these still useful? Lots of logic stuff.

[@rt]

Certainly of value to hobbyists, yes.

People are still into vintage computers, amateur radio gear, and old electronic musical instruments.
EPROM programmers are still manufactured, but the vintage stuff is way cooler in anybody’s eyes if you can get the software together for it.

[@rt]

Send the transistor checker into Dave’s Mailbag segment.

[jord4231]

Send the transistor checker into Dave’s Mailbag segment.

Good idea!

[greenpossum]

Wow those are old. Not even LS but the original 74 series. The LM stuff might be National Semiconductor's Linear ICs. There are scans of the old data books in the Internet.

[TerraHertz]

Wow! I'd have snapped it up too. You didn't say how much you paid?
Was it a manufacturer or repair place closing down?

Those 74xx ICs have remarkably shiny legs, for such old chips.

[Brumby]

Wow those are old. Not even LS but the original 74 series.

I noticed that too!

Those 74xx ICs have remarkably shiny legs, for such old chips.

Incredibly shiny.  They look pristine.

[jord4231]

Wow! I'd have snapped it up too. You didn't say how much you paid?
Was it a manufacturer or repair place closing down?

Those 74xx ICs have remarkably shiny legs, for such old chips.

I paid $400 for everything. It was a bit tricky at the time. It was all stacked in a very very tight cupboard that I couldn't really get too. So it was a bit of a lucky dip. Aparently what had happened was the guy I brought it off said his son was really in to electronics and one day brought out an old electronics store. However when the son moved from home left it all there and asked his father to sell it

[sleemanj]

Reality is that the ics are a waste of space,  at best unless you want to still be there with most of them in 20 years, is list them on ebay or gumtree or whatever for a couple bucks a drawer and you might get lucky with somebody who gets carried away and buys them all.

A couple years ago I bought a crap ton of SMD resistor reels at auction, hey they were "cheap" right.  After spending some hours cataloging the haul it rapidly became apparent that it was totally impractical to try and sell whole reels let alone cut tapes from them, so I sold them as 10-reel-lucky-dip packs for about a buck a reel as I recall, pays your $10 get 10 random reels.   Sold a few packs like that and then one guy started buying a banana box worth at a time every month or so, got rid of them all within 6 months for about what I paid, of course I did keep a handful of ones I use commonly, but it was a pretty laborious way to buy 5 reels of resistors!

[nctnico]

Wow those are old. Not even LS but the original 74 series. The LM stuff might be National Semiconductor's Linear ICs. There are scans of the old data books in the Internet.

I see chips in non-ESD safe storage boxes. Most distributors still carry the original 74xx and CMOS4000 series. At least you'll get a device which has been stored and transported properly.

[jord4231]

May not be all bad news, there is a lot stuck in to the foil foam stuff too.
I'm not really looking to sell them just too much effort plus I'd hate to sell some one a dud.
The real win for me was loads of motorola power transistors and believe it or not I've had some use of some of the ics already, had everything I needed to build the Carlsons curve tracer recently that was a win Plus I'll never ever have to buy another th resistor 

[calexanian]

Fun if you have the room. Also good fodder for ham swap meets or elecronics flea markets. Realistically though apart from analog stuff there are about 20 or so logic chips that are still useful for hobby type stuff. The vast majority of them however were so esoteric that it would be hard to find uses for them these days. If it were me, I might be tempted to pull out the ones that might be handy one day. Keep a couple of samples of each of the rest on that odd chance you need one for a repair or experiment, then sell the rest off on ebay or something.

[bob91343]

A couple of years ago I picked up a box of electronics parts from Craigslist, free.  There were plastic bags full of resistors, mostly, quite a few capacitors, and over 5000 1N4148 diodes.  The only 'bad' parts were some resistors, mostly 220 Ohms that were all over the place in resistance.  I threw out a few hundred of those; I don't know if they were mismarked or have changed value, although they look new.

Every once in a while I poke through the box to refresh my memory of what's there.  I even use some of the parts to clip off leads to get some short pieces of wire.

Of course the fun of playing with this stuff outweighs the trouble.  Some of the values are not standard, like some bags of 9 Ohm resistors and other strange stuff.  The resistors are mostly 1/4 Watt size.

[rsjsouza]

That is an interesting collection; I still have gobs of plain TTL parts from our early days of hobby eletronics and from various brands and countries of origin (El Salvador, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Spain) - datecodes starting from 1971.

Regarding ESD, the plain TTL devices are so robust that we never had issues with them stored in similar drawers. The oldest CD4000 parts, however, were another story: the pre-B variants of these parts had no protection diodes and blew quite easily. We wrapped them in aluminum foil.

Have fun!

[jfiresto]

... Regarding ESD, the plain TTL devices are so robust that we never had issues with them stored in similar drawers. The oldest CD4000 parts, however, were another story: the pre-B variants of these parts had no protection diodes and blew quite easily. We wrapped them in aluminum foil....

4000 series CMOS always had ESD protection networks; B-series added more buffer transistors to improve their gain. Something was not right with your ESD handling or storage or both if you were losing parts.

[TerraHertz]

the guy I brought it off said his son was really in to electronics and one day brought out an old electronics store.

This sounds like an interesting bit of hidden history. WHICH old electronics store I wonder? There never were that many in Australia, and stores like Dick Smith, Tandy etc tended not to have such a variety of stock.
What city was this in?

Reality is that the ics are a waste of space,  at best unless you want to still be there with most of them in 20 years,...

/Typical "throw out everything old" advice. Blindness to the value of historical preservation for its own sake. Someone who can't conceive that maybe it would be a good thing to be 'still there with them' not just in 20 years, but 200 years. Bequeath them to descendants. (Probably not the electrolytic caps though.)

[NivagSwerdna]

...and a big old eeprom machine too...

EPROM Programmer porn....    I have a mild addiction to buying old programmers.... looks like that is quite niche.... don't turn it on... take it apart!

PS
The 74 series hoard is very useful to arcade game collectors to keep their dodgy boards going... e.g. 74161s are always failing....

[joeqsmith]

That is an interesting collection; I still have gobs of plain TTL parts from our early days of hobby eletronics and from various brands and countries of origin (El Salvador, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Spain) - datecodes starting from 1971.

Regarding ESD, the plain TTL devices are so robust that we never had issues with them stored in similar drawers. The oldest CD4000 parts, however, were another story: the pre-B variants of these parts had no protection diodes and blew quite easily. We wrapped them in aluminum foil.

Have fun!

Interesting.  We used a fair amount of 4000 and I don't remember them being a problem.  It seems the HCT or F parts were more sensitive.  Then again, memory fades as we age...   I did like the 4000.  Dog slow and could run it at very high voltage levels to increase the margins.  Made for some very robust designs.

[jord4231]

the guy I brought it off said his son was really in to electronics and one day brought out an old electronics store.

This sounds like an interesting bit of hidden history. WHICH old electronics store I wonder? There never were that many in Australia, and stores like Dick Smith, Tandy etc tended not to have such a variety of stock.
What city was this in?

Reality is that the ics are a waste of space,  at best unless you want to still be there with most of them in 20 years,...

/Typical "throw out everything old" advice. Blindness to the value of historical preservation for its own sake. Someone who can't conceive that maybe it would be a good thing to be 'still there with them' not just in 20 years, but 200 years. Bequeath them to descendants. (Probably not the electrolytic caps though.)

I Purchased this all in Geelong Victoria, Apparently the closing down store was in Melbourne. I was hoping some one saw the labels on the big fluro boxes and it triggered a memory
Interestingly there are a few odd things here and there like strain gauges that have RS packaging all over them