1n34a Germanium Diode finally found!!

Not many people here are repairing things that need germanium semiconudctors.

You do realize that while the 1N34 was an early diode that somehow made it into hobby circles, for most of the decades since it's merely been used to indicate "small signal germanium diode". There isnt' a lot unique to it, and since most of the articles specified "1N34", the outlets needed to indicate that they had it, or a reasonable facsimile. For that matter, after a while, "1N34" became shorthand in the articles for "small signal germanium diode". You needed that low forward voltage drop, and beyond that, most of the time nothing else mattered.

My stash of germainum diodes are mostly unmarked. I have no idea what they are, and it really doesn't matter. If I need one, one will likely work as well as another.

"!n34" is like "365pf variable capacitors" or "am loopsticks" or a lot of common transistors. They define a part, rather than a specific part.

Michael

I have come across diodes labelled "1N34" which showed a forward drop of

0.6 volts, more-or-less, indicating that they were, in fact, made from silicon, not germanium.

Isaac

I found my 1N5819s!!! I searched hi and low for these quite some time ago. I could find only minimum order 100.

I just ordered 12 from BG. .40 ea. $12 shipped. Smile.

Many thanks for the pointer.

On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 14:41:23 -0700 Mick Nowell wrote in Message id: :

You sure you looked hard enough?

They're everywhere!

Their minimum order was 2000!!

Availability: 15,008 In Stock Quantity Price

1 $ 0.900 10 $ 0.450 100 $ 0.250 1000 $ 0.160

But the price goes down the more you buy.

It's a tradeoff. You can buy resistors at Radio Shack and pay quite a bit for a package of a few, or you can mail order and get a whole lot more for the same price. Unless you abandon electronics next week, you will make use of those extra resistors.

The cost of handling a few components drives up the cost, a willingness to buy more of the same component lowers it. Somewhere in between, the priceis probably the same when you buy a few, or a lot.

Diodes might not be the same, but you can always give them away. You won't be stuck with having to order them again. Or just think of it as paying outrageous prices for a few diodes, and then having lots of leftovers.

Michael

But what do you do if you get Chinese 1N60 type diodes which are made with silicon.

That's the problem with buying from eBay, what happens if you buy them from this company?

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson,  N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379

On Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:07:02 -0700 Mick Nowell wrote in Message id: :

Which distributor are you talking about? Both Mouser and Digikey have stock and you can buy one piece for about 50 cents.

That's a separate issue.

Yes, the problem with Ebay is people treat it like a single entity, "Ebay" rather than a platform for individuals and companies to sell their stuff. For some reason people are willing to buy things from strangers when in the past they would't or at least would give it a lot of thought.

About a decade ago, I was scrapping boards, and found a lot more germanium small signal diodes than I expected. They were larger than silicon small signal diodes have become. An older solid state radio, with the germanium diodes in the discriminator kind of made sense, but I found more than that, though I can't remember what sort of boards. I was surprised, I figured I wouldn't find much and not in more recent boards. "Lot" is relative, but unless manufacturing, one doesn't need that many germanium small signal diodes. Now I wonder where I put those diodes?

Michael

I was able to buy singles through BG. I needed only a dozen to make three cables. As I said I looked quite some time ago.