Have not seen that in a while, an opamp in a TO-99 casing.

May 11, 2008
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A friend of mine asked me to help him out with building up an electronic circuit. Sure, i would help him. I just looked at the bag with components. It all looks really ancient. The LM301A opamp has a TO99 casing. Have not seen that in a very long time. I hope the capacitors have not dried out.

TO-99-8%20Pkg.jpg
 

skimple

Golden Member
Feb 4, 2005
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I think those are still in production. Lot of money to be made in this market, both for schools and for repairing old electronic equipment. Not everyone's ready to hang their hats on SOC being driven by shoddy off-shored software. Discrete rocks!

Edit: Confirmed! Check out page 17 of the TI datasheet:

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm301a-n.pdf
 
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Yeah, i noticed that too when i looked up the pin out of the TO-99 casing.
The other components look old, but i guess i am just to much used too Surface Mount Technology. Using electronic parts with connection wires, i only do when i need a certain power rating or when i am building up a prototype on my breadboard. Speaking of breadboards and smt components, here is a handy tip for anyone reading this : When i need to test SMT components, i just make a small adaptor made of prototyping pcb or i solder the smt components directly on a 2.54mm 6mm long header that i then can plug into my breadboard. Very handy, because using a header automatically gives mechanical stability.
 
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I still have a roll of leaded solder.

Me too. It solders just a lot better than lead free. Although there are lead free solders available that do solder quite nicely. But i do wonder about the toxicity of the added chemicals, metals. I had seen a lead free solder once that had toxicity pictures on it. But it had no lead...
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
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Me too. It solders just a lot better than lead free. Although there are lead free solders available that do solder quite nicely. But i do wonder about the toxicity of the added chemicals, metals. I had seen a lead free solder once that had toxicity pictures on it. But it had no lead...

I blame the earlier demise of electronics on brittle solder. No science behind this :awe:
 

ctbaars

Golden Member
Nov 4, 2009
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I use relays for logic design. Most of my work is through-hole, though that is changing as many DIP's are becoming obsolete.

Edit:
Just bought one roll of leaded solder today! We have an old time assembler that hates the lead-free (smell)
 
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I blame the earlier demise of electronics on brittle solder. No science behind this :awe:

Maybe, but i still have enough lead solder at home for another 5 years. :)
And as long as i can buy it, i will use it. Since it is still allowed for prototyping and rework/repair.

Also, since there is no more lead in lead free solder wire, it does not making it less of a hazard to the environment. Also , the rosin used in lead free solder is just as poisonous if not more compared with the rosin in leaded solder. Before lead free solder, i had never heard of rosin that can irritate skin.

I do am a proponent of RoHS since it is about a lot more chemicals and elements than just about lead only. And in rare cases, some radiation issues would arise when using leaded solder.
 
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I never had to think about it, since i clean the copper pad and component pin as a standard before applying leaded solder. Because it solders so bad mixing lead free and leaded solder.
Something i learned about recently, never mix lead free with leaded solder. As it will result in a very weak solder joint.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,647
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www.anyf.ca
I still have a roll of leaded solder.

I bought one not that long ago that has lead since the one I bought at Radio Shack (way before it turned into The Source) finally ran out. Are they actually going to phase out lead completely? Maybe I got lucky. I think the solder I bought for plumbing is lead free though, but it kind of has to be since it's for potable water.


Tin whiskers are rather interesting, never knew about that till I recently read about it on an electronics forum. I wonder if that is what causes computers to randomly do weird things sometimes. Like completely unexplained problems that are solved by a reboot, or an install that just "goes bad" despite being a fresh install. Maybe a tin wisker develops and happens to short out at the right spot to not completely kill the machine but simply cause a memory corruption but because it's so small it just vaporises. Just a very wild guess though.
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
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I blame the earlier demise of electronics on brittle solder. No science behind this :awe:

That's why all those early Xbox 360s and PS3s pooped the bed. Damn things ran so hot, the repeated thermal stress on the solder joints caused them to weaken and break over time.

Tin melts at a lower temperature than lead. It's also brittle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin

Fortunately you can still buy solders with high lead content. Have a couple of live steam engines I built for my RC boats. Wouldn't want to use the high tin stuff for that. Since you know, it's a hot pressure vessel.
 

John Connor

Lifer
Nov 30, 2012
22,757
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I haven't put together an electrical project in so long. I used breadboards though and then bought a copper clad board maker from rat Shack. I have a schematic for a neat little bug detector I grabbed out of the mag. Popular Electronics. Always wanted to build it. But I have a question: How do you transfer the copper clad board blue print to the copper? I thought carbon paper. Is that what you use? After carbon paper I would have to trace the lines with the included sharpie pen so that the acid doesn't remove the copper.

I know this so-called bug detector isn't going to find you the professonal bugs, but its neat in that it has a light up LED bar graph for signal strength and plays the audio heard with a button press. Can use ear phones. So what it amounts to is that it can verify a transmitter is working. Providing the transmitter is analog.

Would love to have some of the stuff from Opto Electronics. I once had an OS535 board for my Radio Shack Pro2042.
 
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Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
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That's why all those early Xbox 360s and

Fortunately you can still buy solders with high lead content. Have a couple of live steam engines I built for my RC boats. Wouldn't want to use the high tin stuff for that. Since you know, it's a hot pressure vessel.

Silphos or brazed there! ;)





stop derailing atot serious threads :awe:

:biggrin:

IMG_4873-e1333683983197.jpg
 
May 11, 2008
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I haven't put together an electrical project in so long. I used breadboards though and then bought a copper clad board maker from rat Shack. I have a schematic for a neat little bug detector I grabbed out of the mag. Popular Electronics. Always wanted to build it. But I have a question: How do you transfer the copper clad board blue print to the copper? I thought carbon paper. Is that what you use? After carbon paper I would have to trace the lines with the included sharpie pen so that the acid doesn't remove the copper.

I know this so-called bug detector isn't going to find you the professonal bugs, but its neat in that it has a light up LED bar graph for signal strength and plays the audio heard with a button press. Can use ear phones. So what it amounts to is that it can verify a transmitter is working. Providing the transmitter is analog.

Would love to have some of the stuff from Opto Electronics. I once had an OS535 board for my Radio Shack Pro2042.

Maybe you are better of with prototyping pcb if it is a small circuit ?

Something like this (My personal favorite, although i think you are better of buying this locally in the US:
http://www.newark.com/roth-elektronik/re210-s1/pcb-pad-hole/dp/05M1076
Single square pads, 2.54 mm spacing. Eurocard size.

4818340.jpg
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
17,501
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Silphos or brazed there! ;)

Brazed, just like doing copper pipe for plumbing at home. Just little ones for live steam models, but there's a surprising amount of pressure in them. Plus is the joint gives, well... I'm not swimming out to retrieve the boat.