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Any Central Components Wiki/Database?

segaloco

segaloco

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2023
Messages
114
I was curious if anyone is aware of a wiki or other type of information store beyond just datasheet aggregators that documents IC and other components? For a specific example, I'm looking for some historical information on the L139 demuxer, I can find sites offering datasheets or purchase, but nothing to the effect of "This component was invented by <vendor> on <date>, involved patents <x>, was priced at $<y>, first appeared in catalog/databook <z>.". Basically a source that could be used to establish timelines, aid cost and supply chain analysis, and track some usage of components for historical computing research. One point of confusion I frequently have a hard time with is, what with how incestuous the silicon industry is, is figuring out what industry name invented a thing vs who owned it the longest vs who is currently the holder of the IP and patents, that kind of thing.

Any suggestions? Is there such a resource currently?
 
At one time, the choices on 7400 series logic were pretty simple: 74xx vs. 54xx, 74xx vs. 74S/74F vs. 74LS. Current choices are almost bewildering: 74HC, 74HCT, 74LVC, 74ABT, 74AS, 74ALS, 74HCS, 74AHCT...
There are also gotchas--74L86 is very different from, say, 74LS86 (different pinouts). And some of the old series has been discontinued and very hard to find. There is also the Signetics 8000-series TTL logic, used in a lot of DEC gear--and often, very hard to source today. Some vendors, such as Fujitsu, used their own part numbers.

It's not a simple picture, even for TTL; I suspect PMOS and ECL can be just as challenging to source. Heaven help you for RTL and DTL.

Offered in the spirit of "For what it's worth".
 
Well and making the matter tricky is the fact that 7400 started as a Ti line but then became a de facto standard product family offered by all sorts of folks: Fairchild, National Semiconductor, etc. What really got me trying to suss out some sort of historical vendor information was I just yesterday fished a 1989 National Semiconductor LS/S/TTL databook out of a free pile at the university and, naturally, it's full of 54/7400-series components. Among them, the 139 and 373, are a demux and address latch respectively which are used on the Famicom/NES. I then thought back to a week prior, looking these up in an old Ti databook from the mid 1970s. Given that Ti ultimately gobbled up National Semiconductor, I was then confused because the NS databook very much was NS, it was pre-Ti purchase, but then had plenty of 7400-series stuff that I thought was of Ti vintage. By the end of the day I had put two and two together and realized NS was second-sourcing 7400 stuff out to folks, them merging with Ti later would just be coincidence (well maybe not entirely given their similar product lines). Gosh it's hard being a 30 year old trying to reconstruct these timelines that I wasn't there for.

So end of the day, I wanted to figure out was, for instance, the 74139 something Ti made and NS started producing second-hand, something NS made and Ti was producing second-hand, or something some third vendor made and they both started producing as well. That's something I'm still having a hard time finding in one place and may just need to comb historical databooks for, who created any given 7400-series IC. I would assume Ti is behind the overwhelming majority of them, but once a numbering scheme becomes de facto...there is the question of whether any given entry in that line was introduced by one of the other vendors also creating things in that series. In other words, was Ti the arbiter of when a new 7400-series model number was promulgated, or could another vendor possibly be the source of any given 74x after a certain period.
 
Al Kossow said:
IC Master is your friend. http://bitsavers.org/components/icMaster/
I should scan more of them, but they are thick and have extremely thin paper inside
Click to expand...
No kidding, reminds me of the pages in bibles. But when you have to fit that much content in a book you can actually lift, makes sense. Given the impermanence of data books I'm surprised they didn't just pop em out on news print.
Al Kossow said:
Nope. It was a free for all
Click to expand...
Drat, I was afraid of that. Well it was worth a shot.
 
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