Identifying chips?

Sometimes you don't. Even if you did find out, it could be a part number that is not available to the public. You could put the number on google and see what happens. Google is pretty good with part numbers.

Tom

You become familiar with the prefix, which is indicative of the manufacturer.

YOu just keep watching parts numbers, and soon you will learn that some are standard parts and the actual manufacturer means nothing. Logic families like the 74xx series are a good example.

YOu get an NTE replacement guide (do they still print one?) and look up the part in it. THe look up table will give you the number for their replacement part for the component (if they have a sub), and that will at least give you some general information about the device. (This can be valuable since if you are looking to salvage parts out of a scrapped piece of equipment, some ICs will have no value at all for the hobbyist, and this will quickly give you an idea.) THey even have a website, I don't have the URL handy, where you can look up devices electronically.

Nowadays, with web searches, you can just use the part number (making sure it is the part number and not the datecode that is usually on an IC as the second line) as the search term, and often you will get some hits. Even the common pages of distributors may provide a single line of description for a device.

Traditionally, one would just simply start collecting the databooks as they became available, something still valuable though I don't know if many companies still print paper books for this purpose. You do get familiar with prefixes and then it's easy to figure the proper book to check. You do get familiar with part numbers, so common parts are fairly obvious; you see a "741" in a part number and notice the IC has 8 pins, and no matter what other prefix and suffix surrounds it, it's highly likely that it is a common op-amp.

Take note that some parts are either custom for a specific equipment manufacturer, or at the very least carry a custom number for that equipment manufacturer. And those may be really hard to track down information about, since they weren't aimed at a general end user (and the equipment manufacturer may not want the information loose). FOr simple and common functions, you can often guess at what a custom numbered IC really is. A 3 terminal IC in a power supply just may be a common 3 terminal regulator with a custom number. But one is only making guesses in these cases, and one really has to trace the circuitry to see if it does match what the guessed IC expects.

Michael

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There are some other catalogs to download there, as well.

I have a ton of chips that I got from a gentleman awhile back (with no paperwork)and have had resonable success using the following site to look many of them up. You can usually get the datasheets.

Good luck,

Scott

This is probably of no use to you, but it might be in the future or for someone else: