Ouchie :-D my hands sometimes look like I have pets with sharp teeth and claws that are spaced exactly .1in apart. Ground the floor and apply +5V at the top. It might solve the mystery of the universe, but we'll never know. It's probably 42 anyway.
I used to work for a printer service center. We did warranty service, for Cannon, HP, Epson and others. We had 10's of Thousands of parts to keep track of. Don't label by the numbers on the chips. Just label your bins A1 A2 A3, etc. Then keep the location of chips in a database. If one bin gets full of a particular chip, then put them in another bin and put the other bin number in the Database. Then when you lookup a chip in the database, you will know you have Z80's, in Bin a14, b21, and c2. This way you can start putting them in bins and if you find a large stash of chips later on you just start a new bin for those chips.
I was about to post the same thing, setting up a database system is well worth the initial effort. Pick 1 IC, (or group of, if you rough presort) add it to the DB, tag a bag with the name+a number, drop it into the bag, tag the drawer/box with some other identifier, add that as another field to the DB, update the DB with the info. Or use wall hangers for the group of bags and tag the wall and the bags, like in stores.
Seems like a good way. The only other sort rule might be to put chip types in a specific row (CPUs, logic, ram, roms, etc) or at least keep them grouped in sequential bins. For example CPUs in bins A1, A2, A3... Ram in bins B1, B2, B3.... Logic in bins C1, C2, C3....etc.
True story, i found a TV video game system on top of my neighbors garbage bin one garbage day. I immediately rescued it, but it was already full of water from the previous nights rain. Took a bit of work, but i cleaned it up and it worked! It was one of the basic tennis, hockey, handball games. So no cartridges, just the built in games. But since my parents were never going to buy a game system for us kids (we were supposed to play outside), it was all we had.
The best way to store your chips is the so-called “chaotic storage system”: store them in small bins, straws or whatever and keep in Excel sheet with the chips and the names/number of the drawers/bins.
I was also going to suggest this, but with a twist where pin-count, function and size or specialty features demand for different rows or columns in a wall of small drawers. The "Chaotic storage system" is actually called Dynamic Storage in the logistics industry. :)
Yep definitely this and with some general larger organisation like an "ICs" section, a hardware section etc. Even then you can be as silly as having random parts in the same drawer. Doesn't need to have 1 part per drawer. Whilst it would be nice to label the actual drawers, just mark them with a grid or a number or similar and search in the spreadsheet.
I do that with SMD components. Got a bunch of SMD trays and I label them by box-row-column, so box 1, row A, column 2. Especially with SMD components, it's very, very, very important to have good backups of the document, though!
You should seriously consider entering all of your loose chips like the collection you just got into a database and then whenever one of your repair vids comes up you aren't hunting through a pile of 'donor parts' mobos and random bags of chips, but have a clear list of exactly what chips you have a replacement for and what ones you don't. Will probably take you a couple of days but save WEEKS in the future! Love everything you do, Adrian!
The 8255 is actually older than the 8088. It was introduced with the 8080 and it's probably the most popular 8-bit programmable I/O controller ever produced. I think it was even used with other than Intel CPUs
Very popular I/O chip in arcade machines. Where they were interfaced with pretty much almost anything. Scramble hardware (there's a lot of games for that, eg. Frogger) uses two of those and they are running on Z80.
8255 was indeed used all over the place - definitely not just intel cpus. One reason is that it had 3 8 bit ports, rather than 2 as most (all?) competitors had. The ports weren't particularly flexible though, and the VIA cips were functionally more capable.
When I have an unknown quantity to sort I will start by sorting the first few bags into a sensible number of bins, then when a bin gets full, dump it out, remove the label and re-sort it. This does involve handling each thing multiple times, but it's usually easier (and certainly less daunting) than trying to figure out the entire system at once.
Start by labeling your storage area and bins shelf 1 2 3 bin a1 a2 a3 and so forth use labels that make sense to you. Then, create an Excel or similar spread sheet that corelate with each location. Then add the part number, brands, and quantity of the chip in the specific bin so you dont need to technically put all the same chip in the same bin, which is unrealistic for your setup and time constraints but it will be super important to add and subtract what you use over time. This will be useful with the search command in the spreadsheet we did this in the airforce as long as people updated everytime something used or stocked it worked perfect and is flexable.
Yep all of this. I buy random stuff from AE etc. Switches, connectors etc usually come in packs of 5 or 10. Just chuck them in the next available drawer and add to spreadsheet. Include a category column in your spreadsheet so you can autofilter by "switch" or "IC" etc. For bonus points put it in a cloud service like or Onedrive or Google Drive so you can access on the go to check what you have at home.
Doing a sorting/organization video IS absolutely great content for all of us OCD people… the “Mega organization video” may end up being your most popular one of all time :)
The NES was released in 1985 in New York, but it had a nationwide release in 1986. Galaxian has an 8 kiB PRG maskROM. It's the only officially released game to be so small.
@freeculture It's PRG maskROM is 16 kiB. Most "NROM" and similar mapperless boards have either 16 or 32 kiB PRG and 8 kiB CHR. Only homebrew has CHR less than 8 kiB.
The Atari "Sally" Chip is a Rockwell 6502B or 6502C, which means they can be pushed up to 2.0MHz (on the 6502B) to 2.5 or 3.0MHz (on the 6502C). It is 100% Hardware Compatible with the MOS 6502 as Rockwell was licensed to make them for their clients and R&D Systems. It was also used on some systems on the Space Shutle and MIssile Guidance Systems for our ICBMs in the 80s and 90s. Atari used them because their ability to go 2.0MHz as the Atari 8bit Systems tun at 1.75MHz. One can run a 6502A (1.0- 1.5 MHZ 6502, moslt by MOS) at 2.0MHz but it wull run hot and have a short life. With the 6502B and 6502C they can handle the faster clock speed without producing so much heat and have a long life. You can swap out a "Sally Chip" with a slower 6502 on a Vic20, PET or Apple II and it would work fine. There is no Pin Incompatibility like on the 6510. The 6530s (RIOT Chips) are used on both the Atari 2600 and on Arcade machines. Pokeys were used on the Atari 8Bit for I/O and sound, and on Atari made Arcades for sound. Some Arcades had 2 to 4 Pokeys for special Stereo and Quadraphonic sound effects. The GTIA and Antic Chips worked together on the Atari 8Bit Video. But you should know that one from the Atari 8Bit Repair videos. The SCSI Chip you shown was never used on the Macs. Macs had always used the NEC Chip. They used the NCR 5380s; used on all their 68K Maca and many of their PowerPC machines.
I SO wish the C64 used a straight up 6502 instead of the 6510 so that we could have upgraded it to a Rockwell 6502C and made an absolute MONSTER of an Elite playing machine back in the day!
You cant use a sally to replace a 6502. It has an additional halt pin, and the r/w pin has moved. Some earlier 400 and 800 have a regular 6502 with some additional logic to implement the halt. The 6502c name used by atari is confusing, its not the official 6502c. The 6530 is a RRIOT, a version of the 6532 RIOT with some built in rom, and even less ram, 64 bytes. Atari used the 6532 in 2600, 850 interfaces, and floppy drives. Commodore PET drives have them too.
If I remember correctly, the Intel 8255 is a PIO. The 8251 is a USART. I remember seeing those on the old Visual Tech terminals. The 8237 is a DMA controller. The 8042 is a keyboard controller. Seeing these brings back memories of my tech days!
My dad always binned his in those little drawers with 3-4 part numbers per drawer. I do something similar. I've taken an IKEA Alex drawer cabinet, 3D printed custom dividers and when necessary covered the bin in foil for ESD protection and then putting the chips on ESD foam. I also have all of my jellybean components sorted that way too.
When I was collecting chips, I organized them like mouser does: Manufactuer > Type > Part number I used an old wall mounted bolt tray system to hold them all in like would see from a parts store. Quick, easy.
@@grantfryer1 I figured with 512gb he could have stored quite a big library of games for recallbox. Oh well. Wreckall box I guess as Adrian pronounced it
when you have difficulty reading the chip ID, sp you should make yourself a lamp with different color light in it, I use ws2812 so it can switch between the basic colors, it can make it so much easier to read the chips. by simply changing the color of the light. Love your videos, Keep it up-
One thing that has helped me... if you have a spreadsheet and bins/boxes/whatever... have a column in your spreadsheet for "location" to track which bin/box/drawer/etc the item is stored.
Hvc - 002 is the number on the powersupply that was originally used for the famicom it was also used with the super famicom Also the output on the powersupply is 10v and center negative for reference
The windowed ceramic Microchip parts with gold caps are collectibles that could be readily resold on eBay. The little 8-pin ones are the most sought after. Microchip used to hand out those little ESD safe boxes with assortments liberally at seminars, trainings, and trade shows to potential customers.
I use small, stackable tackle boxes (the kind with removable dividers & a clear lid - despite the clear lid, I print labels for the lids because OCPD). They cost more than I'd like to pay, but my sanity is a nice side-benefit 😄
A buddy and I, on a sleepover, started Bionic Commando in the evening, trading the controller back and forth as thumbs got tired. We celebrated the final win with breakfast, and then slept all day! I never owned a NES until later life. My first console that wasn’t my father’s (he was an Atari-only fanboy) was the SNES, which I bought with my own funds the week it was released. I remember the Best Buy cashier was irate having to count $200+ in ones and fives.
Love your videos! First time I feel I can contribute so here goeas! Borrowing from my LEGO experience of sorting small bits, I'd first sort by function, then form, then size then if there are still too many, sort by part number, for for example: Function: could be categories such as: CPU, Serial driver, keyboard driver, graphics, sound etc Form: DIP40, DIP20, PLCC, PGA (Pin Grid Array), etc Category: PC, C64, Atari For example you'd part those DIP40 CPUs you got today: They would all go into the CPU Function group Then they all go into the DIP40 bin Then bin them by class, PC (all intel CPUs go here), C64: 6510 I guess (yes 6510 is also the CPU for other computers, but maybe you use it mostly with C64s), z80, Misc for the rest if there were other CPUs of that formffactor) Then e.g. the CPU/PC bin would be sorted by part numvber: 8086, 8086-2, 8088, V20, V40 etc. You get the gist :) To further make it more concrete the Function could be e.g. a dedicated small parts organizer such as a Akro-Mils 24 Drawer from wallmart Form could be a row or column in the organizer Category would be one or more drawers in the row, depending on how you store them, just label the dawer so you can easily locate the right drawer, so you could have all 8086 CPUs in one drawer, all 6510s in another etc
Hi from Eugene! Could cover a large area with construction paper and start making piles marking the paper as you go. Cross out and move piles as needed.
Since there are so many ICs why not use some of those IC tube/rails and then just store them in tubing like cardboard shipment tubes or PVC pipe. Number the main pipe and each rail and then use those location codes in the database. Jameco (and I'm sure others) have the empty IC tubes of various widths. Then for individual addressing you could use small round color stickers or those homework stars and log the coordinate+color for each variant for quick location within the rail, since they will be even harder to read through the plastic (and some were hard to read even naked).
Hi Adrian. I keep my chips in parts bins like the kind you can get at a DIY/home-improvement store. Then I labeled the bins by functionality (AND, OR, NAND, NOR, Inverter, XOR, XNOR.), then more complicated ones like Flip-flops, tri-state bus buffers, latches, mux/demux, display drivers, etc… the trick is to keep no more than 5-10 of any part # (74x00, for example), but keep a variety of “families” handy (plain, S, LS, F, HC, etc…) in each bin and keep the rest in reusable, stackable containers with lids, like Tupperware. When you run low on a part #, dig a few out of the containers and sort. I sort the larger containers by the package/# of pins. So all 14/16-pin DIP ICs go in one bin, 24-28 pin DIP in another, 40+ pin DIP in yet another, and so on. Make sure you test each one before binning it; there’s nothing worse than pulling a part only to find it’s bad. 😢 The Retro Chip Tester Pro would be perfect for this. 😅
For sorting your chips I'd suggest bead trays. It's what I do and it helps with different types. They have removable dividers for larger parts. Like 74LS series logic chips in one tray organized by part number. If you have too many to fit in one compartment you can simply expand it to the next. compartment of the tray. You can use a sheet of paper with the part number above each compartment for labeling which is super easy to make with any printer. I'd also suggest putting a small card in one of the front facing bins or using a label maker if you have one handy to mark the trays.
You need those tiny carboard trays with no tops just big enough for the chip and arrange those in a wide but not tall tray like how people organize small Mineral and fossil samples. The Container Store has a metal cabinet with the trays that are like 2 inches tall.
I've been using plastic drawers, but the trouble is that over time you start needing to move things to different drawers because of space. Also, you don't want too much empty space in a drawer because then you're wasting space. So I wanted more flexibility to move things around. What I've started doing involves putting labels on a roll of magnetic tape (whatever they call it), and gluing thin sheet metal on the front of all the drawers, so I have magnetic labels that can move easily between drawers as I move parts around. Problem: it's hard to get the sheet metal to lay flat on the drawers, at least with the hot glue I've used. The corners keep popping up.
The way I would handle this is as follows. Stage 1; Given you already have many many of them I would start by just cataloguing what you have. Since you are already going to use a spreadsheet I would Just grab a bin and a bunch of chips. Add the chips one by one into the spreadsheet and fill the bin. Each part has a bin number. When the bin is full start on bin two. Stage 2; you will be able to start sorting and grouping the data and see how you want to organize them. Strictly speaking you don't have to do this. Then in the spreadsheet you can assign new bin numbers to the groups you decide on. Then start going through the bins and pull the groups together. This does require empty bins remaining or some other containers or bags to use for grouping and then transfer them to the bins that are emptied as you go with that stage. The important thing to remember if you keep your spreadsheet up-to-date as you add and remove it doesn't really matter what bins chips are in so long as the bin numbers are correct in the spreadsheet.
Hi - I once worked on several systems where the software was distributed on UV erasable EPROMs. Each upgrade amounted to at least 24 to 32 replacement EPROMs. The vendor would ship the upgrade EPROMs in plastic boxes that measured 5 x 9 x 1 inches. While the PROMs were placed in the bottom half of the boxes, the top and bottoms were lined with conductive foam and chips could be placed in both halves of the box. After the upgrade was complete the vendor did not want the old EPROMs back. So now I have about 25+ of these plastic boxes and an pile of 32, 64, 256 and 512 series of UV erasable EPROMs. A number of years back I found myself in the same predicament you face with unsorted chips. The boxes the UV PROMs came in were the answer. Plastic drawers I found, are more trouble than they are worth. They are OK for resistors, capacitors etc. But I found with 14 - 16 pin or larger ICs the chips were always upside down in the drawers. And as you pointed out when new families of chips came out, it took a lot time rearraigning the drawers. Since the UV PROM boxes came with conductive foam on both the top and bottom, I am able to keep a large number of the 74LS and other series of ICs in these boxes. When I am working on a project that needs a number of ICs, I'll pull the chips from storage, and dedicate a box for the project until the project is complete. Further, since the boxes were for large format ICs they can easily hold CPUs, Interface Chips etc. The plastic boxes stack nicely and the 1 inch edge size is perfect for P-Touch labels. When I need to add new or different families of ICs, I get some new boxes, fill them, label and restack the boxes on my shelves. There are versions of the plastic boxes still available at Mouser, Digi Key etc., but they can be expensive. But there are heavy duty cardboard versions that are approximately the same form factor. In most cases the conductive foam is extra. For me, I found sorting parts into parts drawers was something I had to do at my bench or other flat surface, and took me away from things I wanted to accomplish. If I pre-grouped the ICs, I could sit in the living room and stuff the plastic boxes and not hide away from my family. A 5x7 notebook is/was my database. Hope this gives you some help in maintaining some order in parts management. Thank you for all your hard work. About five years ago I retired from the communications industry with extensive hardware experience. Your channels are "must see TV" for me, as I learn something new each time I watch your content. Please keep up the good work.
The 74LS154 is a 4 to 16 line decoder (encoder?) It takes a 4-bit binary input, then turns on one of the 16 output lines corresponding to the binary input. So, if you input 0101, output line 5 (the sixth one) will turn on; 0000 will turn on output line 0, and 1111 will turn on output line 15, and so on. I believe it also has a CS (Chip Select) input as well. One can easily make a “Knight Rider/Cylon Eye” display with one of these, a 555 timer, and a programmable up/down binary counter, or a PIC 16f series microcontroller (or similar, such as pretty much any Arduino.)
You could do something simple like just binning by the last two digits of the chip number: xxx00 and xxx01 in the first drawer, xxx02 and xxx03 in the second drawer up to xxx98 and xxx99 in the 50th drawer. (I ran a quick check on the 74x numbers listed in Wikipedia and the last digits seem to be more equally used than the first two digits after the 74x.) It's like a hash table in programming: The order won't make sense but it allows for quick lookup.
For chip storage I like using the yellow/black Harbor Freight storage organizers with the removable trays and I 3d print smaller trays to fit my needs. They can be had on sale or with coupons for around $7. You can easily build a box to hold several of them and with the removable trays easy to bin parts.
The chips marked with “ES” are preproduction Engineering Samples that may or may not meet all of the target specifications. Sometimes they draw too much current or won’t hit the target speed, but other times there are glaring errata such as a clock that counts from 0 to 24 hours or completely borked peripherals.
Use by and best before are very different. I am a person who goes to Burning Man every year and I have a storage unit in Reno where excess food gets stored. I brought it all home to Ottawa to eat and reset it, and I've found stuff saying best before 2017, like a bag of cranberries, and they were fine. Along with cereal, crackers, chips, canned food, ramen.. There's so many preservatives in processed food it lasts forever.
As far as sorting and organizing, I've recently been faced with doing such to my LEGO and Magic the Gathering collections. What worked for me, which might not work for you, and may be more time consuming than other methods: 1. Select a category arbitrarily. The smaller your unsorted stock, the easier it should be to guess a good category. 2. Look through the entire collection to find things that fit that category, and put them all in one place. 3. Determine if you can easily find anything you want in this 'pile'. If not, select a sub-category, and go back to Step 2. 4. Find a temporary container to fit each of the sorted organized categories. 5. If you still have unsorted stock, go back to Step 1. 6. If you have very small collections in a category, might be worthwhile to combine some related ones. 7. Finalize the storage location/container of each of your categories, and properly label them. A label maker might help, or marker on painter's tape can work too. Leave room for collections to grow, as well as temporary space that's useful while digging through. 8. (Optional) If you notice you have more things in a category than you think you'd ever use, and/or could get replacements easily, consider packaging up the bulk and setting it aside to send to someone else who might be able to use it. Or recycle it in one place. Or throw it away. Whichever has the best ratio of relieving ongoing stress vs storage capacity vs feeling of not wasting.
Just FYI Adrian, the "expiry date" for candy like that is not really a date when it expires. It's more of a "best before" date, where the candy might be a bit stiff, or sticky, or otherwise stale, after that date. There's nothing in them that can really Go Off or Go Bad. So you shouldn't have to rush yourself.
For organizing parts I do small heaps on a large table on A5 paper by type. If piles keep being small I consolidate by family like 3 an 4 input AND-gates, Flipflops, 8-Bit latches and Flipflops, one and two or four OPAMP chips together until the piles grow and no longer would fit the drawer-boxes. I use dividable (by 2 or 4) drawer boxes of two different sizes, a flat one of about 6x5x2‘‘ an a taller 6x5x4.5‘‘ in a shelve that fits 6x8 tall or 6x16 smaller drawer which I mounted 8 shelves 2x2 back to back on an old movable whiteboard stand on rollers which is very nice.
The NES was my first console gaming experience as well. My brothers and I first played on a cousin's NES playing SMB1 on vacation and eventually our parents got us one of our own. Not quite my first ever gaming experience as that was a yahtzee game on a Mac 128K that my parents had for their business at the time.
when you make the spreadsheet and start to organize the chips, obviously all the CPUs kinda get lumped together, ram in another, then at the end the random odd stuff but... Number the bins or drawers and mark in the spreadsheet "X part, bin #, row #, how many of that chip" sure it will take some time to set up but once its done its going to help a LOT and adding new parts is fairly easy, also leave yourself a spot to leave notes like "need to order more" or "known to fail a lot"
36:02 there are adaptor boards you can use to do that, and also boards for the opposite direction (some even Nintendo-made, but those are soldered to Famicom game boards in some copies of games released around the NES's first Christmas). As a side note, many early NES-style famiclones (not those NoaC-based) have two internal Famicon-style slots, one of which is outfitted with a 90º NES-to-Famicom adaptor, and while many use the second slot for a multigame cartridge and some leave it unused, there are models that allow both NES cartridges from the front slot and Famicom cartriges from a top slot. 37:01 you can do it from the regular controller ports, too. There is a thing called a multi-tap that allows for just that (and it seemingly can be nested up to 5 times=64 players, but there's a grand total of 1 game that supports that mode, and it's a homebrew; most official games that allow more than 2 players are made for either 3 or 4). 38:59 if my basic speedreading hasn't failed me, it says something about unly using the official Nintendo power supply, whose part number is HVC-002.
Famicom is DC, and can use a Sega Genesis 1 PSU. The Japanese PSU however is safe to use as the regulator only sees an extra 2 volts on input, and the RF shield Nintendo used as a heatsink is more than sufficient at removing the extra heat. I've had the same system for 20 years without issue. Also the HVC-002 is the Famicom PSU.
Hey Adrian, being that I have accumulated thousands or more 😆 over 50 years of ttl, cmos, and so on, I have them all in those plastic bins that you mentioned. It may look too dense, it works. In the top drawer I have 7400-7409, next 7410-7419, 7420-7429 and so on, some situations, I have 74200-74299, but I think you get it. Even cmos 4040-4049 etc. When I'm looking I bring the drawer over and even though some flipping, I can fine it in seconds. Just my way and all of them fit at least with ttl/cmos in one big drawer cabinet. My way it's simple but I've done this for that for many years.😊 btw, I have a dozen or more cabinets like this, I'm just like you buddy, I love this stuff!
In terms of storing chips I wish I saved the old plan-o-grams when I worked at Radio Shack back in the early 90s. They had a great system for organizing parts.
tech tip on organizing your parts for ease of searching. Assuming you have one of those standard parts drawers you can get anywhere. If you have an IC chip you use often, and you know you'll need it often, then create a label for it and put all of those chips in that bin. Do this until you run out of commonly used chips. Every time you access your chips and you see that IC chip loose and floating around, stick it in the correctly marked bin. Then as you continue working on your projects, every time you have to access a specific chip that you have a large quantity in stock, create a new bin for it. This way you can whittle away at a large stockpile over time instead of having to do it all in one sitting, which makes the seemingly insurmountable mountain not so bad to surmount. Then once you get down to parts you have 1s and 2s of here and there, create alphabetized bins. Then have a searchable database which lists which parts are in which numbered bin. So now you don't have to search though a couple hundred ICs to find that one chip, you can search through a drawer that might have only a handful or so.
When opening famicom cartridges, to avoid damage, take a bar clamp and gently squeeze the top side of the cartridge until it pops open on its own. Don't put too much pressure on the clamp, or you may break the cartridge anyway. Famicom cartridges are extremely fragile and tend to break easily if pushed too hard in any way.
So, when I was organising my parts, I took my cue from Amazon's technique which is to keep similar looking items as far as part from each other as possible. If you have 7400 and 7404 in the same bin you run the risk of accidentally using the wrong part. You need to keep your 7400s in the same bin as kynar wire and flux. That way you can easily spot the item you want. So, I just have bins numbered from, say, 1 to 50 and just throw stuff in random bins, trying to keep similar things (particularly similar looking things) separate. I then have a spreadsheet listing all the parts and what bin they are in.
When I was a wee lad, I would go over to my uncle's house and be in awe at his computer/electronics collection. He would store all of his electronics parts in old Marlboro cigarette boxes. I will say, they made a great little box for storing small parts like this. He had a virtually unlimited supply of the cigarette boxes, and they fit nicely in a drawer. He had drawers and drawers filled with cigarette boxes, filled with chips, resistors, and all sorts of glorious parts. This probably isn't helpful today, because nobody smokes that much anymore (hopefully) but it did work well for his organizing of his electronics.
To reduce the number of drawers you need, just use generic numbering on the drawers and a database/spreadsheet to link the parts to a drawer number. You can even put different parts into one drawer. This at least minimises the number of drawer’s to look through for a specific part.
Adrian, do you want everything sorted or do you want everything tracked and sorted? Sorting would be easier to implement and not require you to actively track inventory (think about checking out at the grocery store). You can still sort and have a placeholder to remind you what was in there without having to scan everything out... think about how an autoshop might have drawers of bolts and nuts with a vendor that can replenish. Most importantly, whatever you implement needs to be something that you will use!
Speaking of Super Mario Bros. quality games on other systems, within the same year on the C64 was the Great Giana Sisters, the cracked copy I got was sprite-modified to Super Mario Bros and it was so close graphically and played so smoothly at the time I thought it was a legitimate port from Nintendo to the Commodore 64, just with different music. So other systems were plenty capable but ya Nintendo really got a lot right with the Famicom/NES. For my part in gaming machines I went Atari 2600, C64, Amiga 500, PC (386DX40) then concurrent with PCs SNES, PlayStation 2 then backtracked to Saturn, then Dreamcast then Wii. Haven't bought an actual hardware console since the Wii. Since then it's all PCs and emulation. I don't see that changing until the end of my days.
Your Basement is like my storage locker, but with much smaller bits. I've standardized on a particular storage box. The box gets a number, and everything that goes into that box goes on the spreadsheet, and tagged with that box number. I call this the "Archeological Filing System", as the older stuff is in lower numbered boxes...
I use colours, 3 colours (column, drawer, and 'section') and split up the drawers like you said (740x, 741x, etc in sections in the drawers, as few or many as needed in each drawer, keeping each number separate in the 'sections' rather than per drawer) then I have an Excel sheet, which I can search for the IC number, it tells me 3 colours, I can go straight to the column, drawer and section based on the colour given :) - the Excel sheet also keeps track of how many I 'should' have of each, and other 'notes' (such as specific version/manufacturer notes etc) *edit* Also, on the NES (At least here in the UK) it has two standard controller ports, and you could get a 'multi-tap' adaptor, that plugged into both, then it allowed up to 4 players, or two and a light gun etc! Smash TV, was fun, as was Bomberman :D
I use multi drawer bins with resistive hard foam layers and ICs on each one. I sort by type (logic, register, bus, I/O etc) as I just do not have time to sort them all in a better order. Chances are that you will never touch/need most of them :) The 8 pin Microchip DIPs are likely 12C series, these are microcontrollers. Most of the pic chips you got are really old.. I was using those EPROM type 15 series ones back in the late 80's, early 90's. Learning PIC peculiarities can be "fun". :/
For DIP up to 20, use a match box, just write the type no, on the end of the box, and then put them on the other end in a drawer, that way you can easily see what you have and it doesn't take up much space. TTL 74xxx and CMOS 40xxx its a grate way to store them, and have done that for many years now. 🙂
I have numerated boxes full of small bags of nylon or strong paper with ICs. all labeled. and outside every box ther is a list a list of the chips inside. Also a notebook with the lists . but this time with a short description of every chip and sometimes equivalents. because the all come form american, east german, Czhec, soviet, japanese and some more manufacturers
Back in the day, I notice my cousin storing his ICs and components, by pushing them into these half inch thick sheets/plates of styrofoam. I have managed to find some similar ones. Although not styrofoam, I am pretty sure that they were specifically intended for this, since they are antistatic and have a very similar consistency. I unfortunately don't recall the name or brand. But the idea is that by pushing the pins into the foam, they are quite well protected from getting bend or broken, and the labels always facing upwards means that they are easy to identify. These thin plates of foam are also really easy to precisely cut to the shape or size of drawers, and possibly even stack them too, depending on the depth of your drawers.
Please don't put chips on plain white styrofoam unless you want them to get zapped by static electricity. The anti-static stuff is conductive black open-cell foam, but there is also a pink closed-cell foam that is apparently anti-static, though not conductive, and pink bubble-wrap too.
@@8bitwiz_ Read the comment. I went out of my way to mention that what I use ISN'T styrofoam. This is what is so frustrating with social media, this arrogant initial assumption, that everybody else just have to be dumber than yourself. - If you do know of these products specifically created for this. Since it seems that I have forgotten, and they probably aren't named the same, here is the part of the world were I live anyway. How about actually contributing constructively by naming them instead... That would be far more helpful.
Use double-sided parts boxes. $16 each. Stackable and movable. When you need something you can just bring that part’s box over to the bench. You can also a build a small cabinet to slide each parts box in.
Would it be useful to use a 3D printer to create a tray system for holding IC's. It seems like something could be designed easily for organizing the IC's.
How i would do this is take picture of every chip. Then have Google lens and copy paste into a document. Devide it into sub sections. Like memory bin 7 Part 1 {6} Part 2 {28} Then when you need a part you can search the number in the document and see amount and location. Google lens could save you the brain rut from entering all the numbers into like excel by doing it on your phone just mark copy paste next part mark copy paste. I use that but with entering costumer data when I'm working as it's allot of text that can't be copied. So I use one phone to take pictures of the other and then save to Adress book.
I think you will need to start with the broad strokes, like you mentioned 7400-7409, 7410-7419, etc, but assign these bins as you go. If you see a bin for, say 7400-7409, is getting full, start another bin for that. if you start running out of bins, you will need to combine adjacent bins. When done, go back to the multiple bins, like the 7400-7409 and see if you can reduce the ranges for each bin, like 7400-7402 and 7403-7409, or whatever makes sense.
Look at spinning up a part-DB server. Have each organizer as A, B, C. and each drawer in the organizer as 1-50. Look it up in the part-db, goto organizer D, bin 16. Plus it will import from the part info from digikey, mouser, and a few other sources or custom.
I would go with something like you said, the bins and the draws, kinda like a hardware store has with screws or how Radio Shack had their setup. You could have a draw for "X LOGIC" then you open the drawer and inside that it breaks it down a little more. Then you can have a digital inventory so when you want to look for something you can find what drawer/bin and if you have quantity when you pull one you can take it out and remove it from the inventory and if you realize you have 1000 of the same thing you can offload some items you know you will never use. How far as how to separate it Im not sure. I would go a draw for CPUs, Logic, DRAM, Random, then inside those draws you can break it out like you said by pin count or chip model If you have a spreadsheet you can also make a search that searches for what you have, and even if you wanted a way to compare whats compatible with one another. Of course you would have to do the back end leg work ( or I would be happy to do it for you, Im a dork that way)
If it's not too inconvenient, a component-sorting montage video with youtube-safe music might work well on secondary channel. Either one long one, or split into multiples. Might help keep the revenue / upload schedule going if it doesn't slow down the organizing process too much.
I'd be game to watch a video on your organization/storage methodology in the basement. It would probably help give me and others ideas for storage solutions as well.
My storage technique: Keep parts in the Digikey bags they came in, wherever I put them down. Next time I need that part, just order more, because I have no idea where I left it. :-P I figure, in 20 years, I (if I'm lucky) will clean up and discover a treasure trove of forgotten parts.
Don't forget to buy a good label maker. Yes, you can write your own labels but a label maker last longer than a marker and is easy to read. Also, look into buying walls of those small drawers. They come from defunct factories. Maybe try to find the suppliers for those companies that sell bolts and nuts to companies who have a wide variety of them on hand at all times.
I think 50 drawers should be adequate for your 74xx series ICs. I have two 30-drawer bins for all of my 74 and 4000 series ICs (and I have more of these than any sane person should have.) They are arranged by increasing part number, typically with several parts per drawer, with one series of drawers for each family (74HC, 74HCT, 74LS, 4000, etc.)
With chips i make large sheets of soft rubber to put lots of them. Then i mark the sheat nr one and make a excel base and type in all. Now Easy to find in excel and what sheat (sheat that you push in the legs so they is stuck)
when you get them all sorted out someone will come along and dump them in a bucket to have a place to store their bobbin's and pins that happened to me once hahaha
About the large sheets of antistatic foam, sort the 74xx and 40xx by order of number in one vertical row, copies go in horizontal. That's how I've organized it. You can stack multiple sheets and put it in a drawer. Looking them up is pretty quick that way. I like those kind of sorting so I can spend hours doing this ;) For SMD there are antistatic books with compartments ie 12x12 compartments and you can put a sticker on and label them. They aren't cheap though but really handy to organize these chips because they are small. You can do the same with other chips of course, but I'd order them either by type (ie eeprom, cpu, IO) or machine that they go into (Amiga, C64, Atari etc). You could do a livestream organizing chips while answering in chat questions, that might work.
Maybe put your chips on foam, number the foam pads and take pictures. Apple photos for example does text recognition and makes the pictures searchable. This may be a posibility.
I would like to volunteer my time to help you out with your inventory but living in Cairns Australia makes it too long of a drive. Yes, larger bins will help to reduce shelf space. How about combining large bins with anti-static sheets? Cut anti-static sheets to size, populate one side with say 7400 series chips, the other side with 75002 chips. Place anti-static sheet into bin. This adds more work to the initial organization process but will make it easier to find parts in the future. You could add part labels on the edge of the ant-static sheets.
Is that 6502-13 a 13MHz version? Didn't know they came that fast. Does it need a heat sink? Could it run in a game console that normally uses maybe a 2 or 5 MHz 6502? Would the console run any faster? Or damage the slower chips. I guess I am asking if the timing clock circuit is on the cpu, or separate? Would the slower chips under clock the cpu.
For me the best way for LS gates is to have them in numbered bins by pin gate type like and, nand, nor, latches, buffers, timers, counters, etc. Then if you have a lot of one type you can split those in a separate bin. That has been the best for me, I tried the spreadsheet and failed miserably, what I do is have a small notepad to make a note when I use the last of one particular type.
One more if you have the pads of anti static foam I but them the size of the bins and put the chips in there is much easy to search trough them like that.
Use a hash algorithm to assign the parts to the drawers. Can be quite simple, for example, for 10 drawers, take the last digit of the device number. For 50 drawers, take the last two digits and have two of them for each drawer.
Try putting a range of parts per drawer. Put a label for part min. # to part max #. The idea is to be able to quickly get a sense of approximately which drawer the part is in. If it'[s not in the first pick, it will be in the neighbourhood. You will have to judge how many drawers to devote to which parts, based on the amount in your inventory. I buy quality metal boxes with plastic little see-through drawers from Costco and use a Dymo label printer with white plastic tape reels. I feel they work the best.
I personally think you could actually make a video showing the start of the sorting and binning process and people would be interested in it to help others get started and all kinds of useful suggestions would flood in helping everyone. Just a thought.
![Adrian's Digital Basement ][](http://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_k7CrQRe71qN6c0Ua7A1P_I8KkxjqLa70u0zYeCvdvnKw=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)
I would totally watch a chip organisatiin video with lore and research sprinkled in. Maybe even a series.
I suggest filling a room with parts to dive into, Scrooge McDuck style.
Ouchie :-D my hands sometimes look like I have pets with sharp teeth and claws that are spaced exactly .1in apart.
Ground the floor and apply +5V at the top. It might solve the mystery of the universe, but we'll never know. It's probably 42 anyway.
That would be painful.
@@8bitwiz_ no it wouldn't
Makes me think of the Family Guy episode where Peter does that. It does not work out. Lol
Uhh... you go ahead and go first, bud.
I used to work for a printer service center. We did warranty service, for Cannon, HP, Epson and others. We had 10's of Thousands of parts to keep track of. Don't label by the numbers on the chips. Just label your bins A1 A2 A3, etc. Then keep the location of chips in a database. If one bin gets full of a particular chip, then put them in another bin and put the other bin number in the Database. Then when you lookup a chip in the database, you will know you have Z80's, in Bin a14, b21, and c2. This way you can start putting them in bins and if you find a large stash of chips later on you just start a new bin for those chips.
Agree on this one, as long as you have a directory the bins can be random
I was about to post the same thing, setting up a database system is well worth the initial effort. Pick 1 IC, (or group of, if you rough presort) add it to the DB, tag a bag with the name+a number, drop it into the bag, tag the drawer/box with some other identifier, add that as another field to the DB, update the DB with the info.
Or use wall hangers for the group of bags and tag the wall and the bags, like in stores.
These small boxes stack and can have some foam for chips I use these for small parts and projects in process
Seems like a good way. The only other sort rule might be to put chip types in a specific row (CPUs, logic, ram, roms, etc) or at least keep them grouped in sequential bins. For example CPUs in bins A1, A2, A3... Ram in bins B1, B2, B3.... Logic in bins C1, C2, C3....etc.
21:20 I would *absolutely* watch a video of you just sorting chips! Though that probably says more about me than I care to admit.
Agreed! What a wonderful relaxing way to spend a few hours. 👍🏽
True story, i found a TV video game system on top of my neighbors garbage bin one garbage day. I immediately rescued it, but it was already full of water from the previous nights rain.
Took a bit of work, but i cleaned it up and it worked! It was one of the basic tennis, hockey, handball games. So no cartridges, just the built in games. But since my parents were never going to buy a game system for us kids (we were supposed to play outside), it was all we had.
All those chips, and they didn't include any fish to go with them... :P
The best way to store your chips is the so-called “chaotic storage system”: store them in small bins, straws or whatever and keep in Excel sheet with the chips and the names/number of the drawers/bins.
I was also going to suggest this, but with a twist where pin-count, function and size or specialty features demand for different rows or columns in a wall of small drawers. The "Chaotic storage system" is actually called Dynamic Storage in the logistics industry. :)
Yep definitely this and with some general larger organisation like an "ICs" section, a hardware section etc. Even then you can be as silly as having random parts in the same drawer. Doesn't need to have 1 part per drawer. Whilst it would be nice to label the actual drawers, just mark them with a grid or a number or similar and search in the spreadsheet.
I do that with SMD components. Got a bunch of SMD trays and I label them by box-row-column, so box 1, row A, column 2. Especially with SMD components, it's very, very, very important to have good backups of the document, though!
I just stick them in the bottom drawer of my desk. It’s MASSIVE and I never open it when I need something. I just order fresh parts… I have a problem.
You should seriously consider entering all of your loose chips like the collection you just got into a database and then whenever one of your repair vids comes up you aren't hunting through a pile of 'donor parts' mobos and random bags of chips, but have a clear list of exactly what chips you have a replacement for and what ones you don't. Will probably take you a couple of days but save WEEKS in the future! Love everything you do, Adrian!
The 8255 is actually older than the 8088. It was introduced with the 8080 and it's probably the most popular 8-bit programmable I/O controller ever produced. I think it was even used with other than Intel CPUs
Very popular I/O chip in arcade machines. Where they were interfaced with pretty much almost anything. Scramble hardware (there's a lot of games for that, eg. Frogger) uses two of those and they are running on Z80.
8255 was indeed used all over the place - definitely not just intel cpus. One reason is that it had 3 8 bit ports, rather than 2 as most (all?) competitors had. The ports weren't particularly flexible though, and the VIA cips were functionally more capable.
When I have an unknown quantity to sort I will start by sorting the first few bags into a sensible number of bins, then when a bin gets full, dump it out, remove the label and re-sort it. This does involve handling each thing multiple times, but it's usually easier (and certainly less daunting) than trying to figure out the entire system at once.
Start by labeling your storage area and bins shelf 1 2 3 bin a1 a2 a3 and so forth use labels that make sense to you. Then, create an Excel or similar spread sheet that corelate with each location. Then add the part number, brands, and quantity of the chip in the specific bin so you dont need to technically put all the same chip in the same bin, which is unrealistic for your setup and time constraints but it will be super important to add and subtract what you use over time. This will be useful with the search command in the spreadsheet we did this in the airforce as long as people updated everytime something used or stocked it worked perfect and is flexable.
Yep all of this. I buy random stuff from AE etc. Switches, connectors etc usually come in packs of 5 or 10. Just chuck them in the next available drawer and add to spreadsheet. Include a category column in your spreadsheet so you can autofilter by "switch" or "IC" etc. For bonus points put it in a cloud service like or Onedrive or Google Drive so you can access on the go to check what you have at home.
Got to admit, that all these retro-goodies matching very well with that "new" blue mat :)
Doing a sorting/organization video IS absolutely great content for all of us OCD people… the “Mega organization video” may end up being your most popular one of all time :)
The NES was released in 1985 in New York, but it had a nationwide release in 1986. Galaxian has an 8 kiB PRG maskROM. It's the only officially released game to be so small.
The famicom in 1983 came bundled with Popeye, i wonder how small that was.
@freeculture It's PRG maskROM is 16 kiB. Most "NROM" and similar mapperless boards have either 16 or 32 kiB PRG and 8 kiB CHR. Only homebrew has CHR less than 8 kiB.
The Atari "Sally" Chip is a Rockwell 6502B or 6502C, which means they can be pushed up to 2.0MHz (on the 6502B) to 2.5 or 3.0MHz (on the 6502C). It is 100% Hardware Compatible with the MOS 6502 as Rockwell was licensed to make them for their clients and R&D Systems. It was also used on some systems on the Space Shutle and MIssile Guidance Systems for our ICBMs in the 80s and 90s. Atari used them because their ability to go 2.0MHz as the Atari 8bit Systems tun at 1.75MHz. One can run a 6502A (1.0- 1.5 MHZ 6502, moslt by MOS) at 2.0MHz but it wull run hot and have a short life. With the 6502B and 6502C they can handle the faster clock speed without producing so much heat and have a long life. You can swap out a "Sally Chip" with a slower 6502 on a Vic20, PET or Apple II and it would work fine. There is no Pin Incompatibility like on the 6510.
The 6530s (RIOT Chips) are used on both the Atari 2600 and on Arcade machines. Pokeys were used on the Atari 8Bit for I/O and sound, and on Atari made Arcades for sound. Some Arcades had 2 to 4 Pokeys for special Stereo and Quadraphonic sound effects.
The GTIA and Antic Chips worked together on the Atari 8Bit Video. But you should know that one from the Atari 8Bit Repair videos.
The SCSI Chip you shown was never used on the Macs. Macs had always used the NEC Chip. They used the NCR 5380s; used on all their 68K Maca and many of their PowerPC machines.
I SO wish the C64 used a straight up 6502 instead of the 6510 so that we could have upgraded it to a Rockwell 6502C and made an absolute MONSTER of an Elite playing machine back in the day!
You cant use a sally to replace a 6502. It has an additional halt pin, and the r/w pin has moved. Some earlier 400 and 800 have a regular 6502 with some additional logic to implement the halt. The 6502c name used by atari is confusing, its not the official 6502c.
The 6530 is a RRIOT, a version of the 6532 RIOT with some built in rom, and even less ram, 64 bytes. Atari used the 6532 in 2600, 850 interfaces, and floppy drives. Commodore PET drives have them too.
I love the name of the RIOT chip. Chips with cute names are adorable.
If I remember correctly, the Intel 8255 is a PIO. The 8251 is a USART. I remember seeing those on the old Visual Tech terminals.
The 8237 is a DMA controller.
The 8042 is a keyboard controller.
Seeing these brings back memories of my tech days!
My dad always binned his in those little drawers with 3-4 part numbers per drawer. I do something similar. I've taken an IKEA Alex drawer cabinet, 3D printed custom dividers and when necessary covered the bin in foil for ESD protection and then putting the chips on ESD foam. I also have all of my jellybean components sorted that way too.
When I was collecting chips, I organized them like mouser does: Manufactuer > Type > Part number
I used an old wall mounted bolt tray system to hold them all in like would see from a parts store.
Quick, easy.
It would have been kind of neat to get a glimpse of Recalbox on the raspberry pie but you kind of threw that aside, oh well.
Yeah, I don't think he sent it just to have as spares.
@@mrbusseyit’s ok, he spent 30 mins talking about the famicom. I’ll overlook it. 😂
@@grantfryer1 I figured with 512gb he could have stored quite a big library of games for recallbox. Oh well. Wreckall box I guess as Adrian pronounced it
Might be because he didn't know what it was...
@@LFOSyncToo hell here’s something I don’t know what it is, I’ll just format this card and use it for my camera.
when you have difficulty reading the chip ID, sp you should make yourself a lamp with different color light in it, I use ws2812 so it can switch between the basic colors, it can make it so much easier to read the chips. by simply changing the color of the light.
Love your videos, Keep it up-
One thing that has helped me... if you have a spreadsheet and bins/boxes/whatever... have a column in your spreadsheet for "location" to track which bin/box/drawer/etc the item is stored.
Hvc - 002 is the number on the powersupply that was originally used for the famicom it was also used with the super famicom
Also the output on the powersupply is 10v and center negative for reference
I replaced the whole supply board with a powervamp. That’s there led he was seeing through the grill, so the triad power supply was fine
The windowed ceramic Microchip parts with gold caps are collectibles that could be readily resold on eBay. The little 8-pin ones are the most sought after. Microchip used to hand out those little ESD safe boxes with assortments liberally at seminars, trainings, and trade shows to potential customers.
I use small, stackable tackle boxes (the kind with removable dividers & a clear lid - despite the clear lid, I print labels for the lids because OCPD). They cost more than I'd like to pay, but my sanity is a nice side-benefit 😄
A buddy and I, on a sleepover, started Bionic Commando in the evening, trading the controller back and forth as thumbs got tired. We celebrated the final win with breakfast, and then slept all day!
I never owned a NES until later life. My first console that wasn’t my father’s (he was an Atari-only fanboy) was the SNES, which I bought with my own funds the week it was released. I remember the Best Buy cashier was irate having to count $200+ in ones and fives.
I had a Famicom when I was a kid, that I bought in Japan. I used in the States for years with no issue using the original A/C adapter.
Love your videos! First time I feel I can contribute so here goeas!
Borrowing from my LEGO experience of sorting small bits, I'd first sort by function, then form, then size then if there are still too many, sort by part number, for for example:
Function: could be categories such as: CPU, Serial driver, keyboard driver, graphics, sound etc
Form: DIP40, DIP20, PLCC, PGA (Pin Grid Array), etc
Category: PC, C64, Atari
For example you'd part those DIP40 CPUs you got today:
They would all go into the CPU Function group
Then they all go into the DIP40 bin
Then bin them by class, PC (all intel CPUs go here), C64: 6510 I guess (yes 6510 is also the CPU for other computers, but maybe you use it mostly with C64s), z80, Misc for the rest if there were other CPUs of that formffactor)
Then e.g. the CPU/PC bin would be sorted by part numvber: 8086, 8086-2, 8088, V20, V40 etc. You get the gist :)
To further make it more concrete the Function could be e.g. a dedicated small parts organizer such as a Akro-Mils 24 Drawer from wallmart
Form could be a row or column in the organizer
Category would be one or more drawers in the row, depending on how you store them, just label the dawer so you can easily locate the right drawer, so you could have all 8086 CPUs in one drawer, all 6510s in another etc
Hi from Eugene! Could cover a large area with construction paper and start making piles marking the paper as you go. Cross out and move piles as needed.
every single time a nes switches on is an interesting moment there is magic to the happening.
Since there are so many ICs why not use some of those IC tube/rails and then just store them in tubing like cardboard shipment tubes or PVC pipe. Number the main pipe and each rail and then use those location codes in the database. Jameco (and I'm sure others) have the empty IC tubes of various widths. Then for individual addressing you could use small round color stickers or those homework stars and log the coordinate+color for each variant for quick location within the rail, since they will be even harder to read through the plastic (and some were hard to read even naked).
Hi Adrian. I keep my chips in parts bins like the kind you can get at a DIY/home-improvement store. Then I labeled the bins by functionality (AND, OR, NAND, NOR, Inverter, XOR, XNOR.), then more complicated ones like Flip-flops, tri-state bus buffers, latches, mux/demux, display drivers, etc… the trick is to keep no more than 5-10 of any part # (74x00, for example), but keep a variety of “families” handy (plain, S, LS, F, HC, etc…) in each bin and keep the rest in reusable, stackable containers with lids, like Tupperware. When you run low on a part #, dig a few out of the containers and sort. I sort the larger containers by the package/# of pins. So all 14/16-pin DIP ICs go in one bin, 24-28 pin DIP in another, 40+ pin DIP in yet another, and so on. Make sure you test each one before binning it; there’s nothing worse than pulling a part only to find it’s bad. 😢 The Retro Chip Tester Pro would be perfect for this. 😅
For sorting your chips I'd suggest bead trays. It's what I do and it helps with different types. They have removable dividers for larger parts. Like 74LS series logic chips in one tray organized by part number. If you have too many to fit in one compartment you can simply expand it to the next. compartment of the tray. You can use a sheet of paper with the part number above each compartment for labeling which is super easy to make with any printer. I'd also suggest putting a small card in one of the front facing bins or using a label maker if you have one handy to mark the trays.
You need those tiny carboard trays with no tops just big enough for the chip and arrange those in a wide but not tall tray like how people organize small Mineral and fossil samples. The Container Store has a metal cabinet with the trays that are like 2 inches tall.
I've been using plastic drawers, but the trouble is that over time you start needing to move things to different drawers because of space. Also, you don't want too much empty space in a drawer because then you're wasting space. So I wanted more flexibility to move things around.
What I've started doing involves putting labels on a roll of magnetic tape (whatever they call it), and gluing thin sheet metal on the front of all the drawers, so I have magnetic labels that can move easily between drawers as I move parts around.
Problem: it's hard to get the sheet metal to lay flat on the drawers, at least with the hot glue I've used. The corners keep popping up.
The way I would handle this is as follows.
Stage 1; Given you already have many many of them I would start by just cataloguing what you have. Since you are already going to use a spreadsheet I would Just grab a bin and a bunch of chips. Add the chips one by one into the spreadsheet and fill the bin. Each part has a bin number. When the bin is full start on bin two.
Stage 2; you will be able to start sorting and grouping the data and see how you want to organize them. Strictly speaking you don't have to do this. Then in the spreadsheet you can assign new bin numbers to the groups you decide on. Then start going through the bins and pull the groups together. This does require empty bins remaining or some other containers or bags to use for grouping and then transfer them to the bins that are emptied as you go with that stage.
The important thing to remember if you keep your spreadsheet up-to-date as you add and remove it doesn't really matter what bins chips are in so long as the bin numbers are correct in the spreadsheet.
Hi - I once worked on several systems where the software was distributed on UV erasable EPROMs. Each upgrade amounted to at least 24 to 32 replacement EPROMs. The vendor would ship the upgrade EPROMs in plastic boxes that measured 5 x 9 x 1 inches. While the PROMs were placed in the bottom half of the boxes, the top and bottoms were lined with conductive foam and chips could be placed in both halves of the box. After the upgrade was complete the vendor did not want the old EPROMs back. So now I have about 25+ of these plastic boxes and an pile of 32, 64, 256 and 512 series of UV erasable EPROMs.
A number of years back I found myself in the same predicament you face with unsorted chips. The boxes the UV PROMs came in were the answer. Plastic drawers I found, are more trouble than they are worth. They are OK for resistors, capacitors etc. But I found with 14 - 16 pin or larger ICs the chips were always upside down in the drawers. And as you pointed out when new families of chips came out, it took a lot time rearraigning the drawers.
Since the UV PROM boxes came with conductive foam on both the top and bottom, I am able to keep a large number of the 74LS and other series of ICs in these boxes. When I am working on a project that needs a number of ICs, I'll pull the chips from storage, and dedicate a box for the project until the project is complete. Further, since the boxes were for large format ICs they can easily hold CPUs, Interface Chips etc.
The plastic boxes stack nicely and the 1 inch edge size is perfect for P-Touch labels. When I need to add new or different families of ICs, I get some new boxes, fill them, label and restack the boxes on my shelves.
There are versions of the plastic boxes still available at Mouser, Digi Key etc., but they can be expensive. But there are heavy duty cardboard versions that are approximately the same form factor. In most cases the conductive foam is extra.
For me, I found sorting parts into parts drawers was something I had to do at my bench or other flat surface, and took me away from things I wanted to accomplish. If I pre-grouped the ICs, I could sit in the living room and stuff the plastic boxes and not hide away from my family. A 5x7 notebook is/was my database.
Hope this gives you some help in maintaining some order in parts management.
Thank you for all your hard work. About five years ago I retired from the communications industry with extensive hardware experience. Your channels are "must see TV" for me, as I learn something new each time I watch your content.
Please keep up the good work.
The 74LS154 is a 4 to 16 line decoder (encoder?) It takes a 4-bit binary input, then turns on one of the 16 output lines corresponding to the binary input. So, if you input 0101, output line 5 (the sixth one) will turn on; 0000 will turn on output line 0, and 1111 will turn on output line 15, and so on. I believe it also has a CS (Chip Select) input as well. One can easily make a “Knight Rider/Cylon Eye” display with one of these, a 555 timer, and a programmable up/down binary counter, or a PIC 16f series microcontroller (or similar, such as pretty much any Arduino.)
You could do something simple like just binning by the last two digits of the chip number: xxx00 and xxx01 in the first drawer, xxx02 and xxx03 in the second drawer up to xxx98 and xxx99 in the 50th drawer. (I ran a quick check on the 74x numbers listed in Wikipedia and the last digits seem to be more equally used than the first two digits after the 74x.) It's like a hash table in programming: The order won't make sense but it allows for quick lookup.
For chip storage I like using the yellow/black Harbor Freight storage organizers with the removable trays and I 3d print smaller trays to fit my needs. They can be had on sale or with coupons for around $7. You can easily build a box to hold several of them and with the removable trays easy to bin parts.
The chips marked with “ES” are preproduction Engineering Samples that may or may not meet all of the target specifications. Sometimes they draw too much current or won’t hit the target speed, but other times there are glaring errata such as a clock that counts from 0 to 24 hours or completely borked peripherals.
Use by and best before are very different. I am a person who goes to Burning Man every year and I have a storage unit in Reno where excess food gets stored.
I brought it all home to Ottawa to eat and reset it, and I've found stuff saying best before 2017, like a bag of cranberries, and they were fine.
Along with cereal, crackers, chips, canned food, ramen..
There's so many preservatives in processed food it lasts forever.
As far as sorting and organizing, I've recently been faced with doing such to my LEGO and Magic the Gathering collections. What worked for me, which might not work for you, and may be more time consuming than other methods:
1. Select a category arbitrarily. The smaller your unsorted stock, the easier it should be to guess a good category.
2. Look through the entire collection to find things that fit that category, and put them all in one place.
3. Determine if you can easily find anything you want in this 'pile'. If not, select a sub-category, and go back to Step 2.
4. Find a temporary container to fit each of the sorted organized categories.
5. If you still have unsorted stock, go back to Step 1.
6. If you have very small collections in a category, might be worthwhile to combine some related ones.
7. Finalize the storage location/container of each of your categories, and properly label them. A label maker might help, or marker on painter's tape can work too. Leave room for collections to grow, as well as temporary space that's useful while digging through.
8. (Optional) If you notice you have more things in a category than you think you'd ever use, and/or could get replacements easily, consider packaging up the bulk and setting it aside to send to someone else who might be able to use it. Or recycle it in one place. Or throw it away. Whichever has the best ratio of relieving ongoing stress vs storage capacity vs feeling of not wasting.
The MOS 6530-004 are super rare RRIOT chips that were used in the TIM-1 computer kit (6530-002 & 003 were used in the KIM-1) Nice find! :)
There are also RRIOTs for CBM disk drives, such as the 8050. But they have yet another designation.
Just FYI Adrian, the "expiry date" for candy like that is not really a date when it expires. It's more of a "best before" date, where the candy might be a bit stiff, or sticky, or otherwise stale, after that date. There's nothing in them that can really Go Off or Go Bad. So you shouldn't have to rush yourself.
For organizing parts I do small heaps on a large table on A5 paper by type. If piles keep being small I consolidate by family like 3 an 4 input AND-gates, Flipflops, 8-Bit latches and Flipflops, one and two or four OPAMP chips together until the piles grow and no longer would fit the drawer-boxes. I use dividable (by 2 or 4) drawer boxes of two different sizes, a flat one of about 6x5x2‘‘ an a taller 6x5x4.5‘‘ in a shelve that fits 6x8 tall or 6x16 smaller drawer which I mounted 8 shelves 2x2 back to back on an old movable whiteboard stand on rollers which is very nice.
The NES was my first console gaming experience as well. My brothers and I first played on a cousin's NES playing SMB1 on vacation and eventually our parents got us one of our own. Not quite my first ever gaming experience as that was a yahtzee game on a Mac 128K that my parents had for their business at the time.
when you make the spreadsheet and start to organize the chips, obviously all the CPUs kinda get lumped together, ram in another, then at the end the random odd stuff but...
Number the bins or drawers and mark in the spreadsheet "X part, bin #, row #, how many of that chip"
sure it will take some time to set up but once its done its going to help a LOT and adding new parts is fairly easy, also leave yourself a spot to leave notes like "need to order more" or "known to fail a lot"
36:02 there are adaptor boards you can use to do that, and also boards for the opposite direction (some even Nintendo-made, but those are soldered to Famicom game boards in some copies of games released around the NES's first Christmas). As a side note, many early NES-style famiclones (not those NoaC-based) have two internal Famicon-style slots, one of which is outfitted with a 90º NES-to-Famicom adaptor, and while many use the second slot for a multigame cartridge and some leave it unused, there are models that allow both NES cartridges from the front slot and Famicom cartriges from a top slot.
37:01 you can do it from the regular controller ports, too. There is a thing called a multi-tap that allows for just that (and it seemingly can be nested up to 5 times=64 players, but there's a grand total of 1 game that supports that mode, and it's a homebrew; most official games that allow more than 2 players are made for either 3 or 4).
38:59 if my basic speedreading hasn't failed me, it says something about unly using the official Nintendo power supply, whose part number is HVC-002.
Keep in mind "expiration dates" or more just "best if sold by" dates. They're intended for stores to rotate product and not let it sit for years.
Got enough to build your own Computer! now that would be a cool project to watch 😀
Famicom is DC, and can use a Sega Genesis 1 PSU. The Japanese PSU however is safe to use as the regulator only sees an extra 2 volts on input, and the RF shield Nintendo used as a heatsink is more than sufficient at removing the extra heat. I've had the same system for 20 years without issue. Also the HVC-002 is the Famicom PSU.
Hey Adrian, being that I have accumulated thousands or more 😆 over 50 years of ttl, cmos, and so on, I have them all in those plastic bins that you mentioned. It may look too dense, it works. In the top drawer I have 7400-7409, next 7410-7419, 7420-7429 and so on, some situations, I have 74200-74299, but I think you get it. Even cmos 4040-4049 etc. When I'm looking I bring the drawer over and even though some flipping, I can fine it in seconds. Just my way and all of them fit at least with ttl/cmos in one big drawer cabinet. My way it's simple but I've done this for that for many years.😊 btw, I have a dozen or more cabinets like this, I'm just like you buddy, I love this stuff!
In terms of storing chips I wish I saved the old plan-o-grams when I worked at Radio Shack back in the early 90s. They had a great system for organizing parts.
I think those are Rockwell 6502, not Atari. The Rockwell symbol is slightly different than the Atari, being a solid circle with the two swishes
tech tip on organizing your parts for ease of searching.
Assuming you have one of those standard parts drawers you can get anywhere. If you have an IC chip you use often, and you know you'll need it often, then create a label for it and put all of those chips in that bin. Do this until you run out of commonly used chips. Every time you access your chips and you see that IC chip loose and floating around, stick it in the correctly marked bin.
Then as you continue working on your projects, every time you have to access a specific chip that you have a large quantity in stock, create a new bin for it. This way you can whittle away at a large stockpile over time instead of having to do it all in one sitting, which makes the seemingly insurmountable mountain not so bad to surmount.
Then once you get down to parts you have 1s and 2s of here and there, create alphabetized bins. Then have a searchable database which lists which parts are in which numbered bin. So now you don't have to search though a couple hundred ICs to find that one chip, you can search through a drawer that might have only a handful or so.
When opening famicom cartridges, to avoid damage, take a bar clamp and gently squeeze the top side of the cartridge until it pops open on its own. Don't put too much pressure on the clamp, or you may break the cartridge anyway. Famicom cartridges are extremely fragile and tend to break easily if pushed too hard in any way.
Bins with specific chips. Bins on numbered shelfs. Spreadsheet indicating which chips in which bins and which shelf number that bin is on.
So, when I was organising my parts, I took my cue from Amazon's technique which is to keep similar looking items as far as part from each other as possible. If you have 7400 and 7404 in the same bin you run the risk of accidentally using the wrong part. You need to keep your 7400s in the same bin as kynar wire and flux. That way you can easily spot the item you want. So, I just have bins numbered from, say, 1 to 50 and just throw stuff in random bins, trying to keep similar things (particularly similar looking things) separate. I then have a spreadsheet listing all the parts and what bin they are in.
I can't count the times I have heard you say you need to organise your chips. I feel your pain.
Same for me, it's not the coconut taste but the texture. Zombieland has the exact same conversation
When I was a wee lad, I would go over to my uncle's house and be in awe at his computer/electronics collection. He would store all of his electronics parts in old Marlboro cigarette boxes. I will say, they made a great little box for storing small parts like this. He had a virtually unlimited supply of the cigarette boxes, and they fit nicely in a drawer. He had drawers and drawers filled with cigarette boxes, filled with chips, resistors, and all sorts of glorious parts. This probably isn't helpful today, because nobody smokes that much anymore (hopefully) but it did work well for his organizing of his electronics.
To reduce the number of drawers you need, just use generic numbering on the drawers and a database/spreadsheet to link the parts to a drawer number. You can even put different parts into one drawer. This at least minimises the number of drawer’s to look through for a specific part.
Adrian, do you want everything sorted or do you want everything tracked and sorted? Sorting would be easier to implement and not require you to actively track inventory (think about checking out at the grocery store). You can still sort and have a placeholder to remind you what was in there without having to scan everything out... think about how an autoshop might have drawers of bolts and nuts with a vendor that can replenish. Most importantly, whatever you implement needs to be something that you will use!
Speaking of Super Mario Bros. quality games on other systems, within the same year on the C64 was the Great Giana Sisters, the cracked copy I got was sprite-modified to Super Mario Bros and it was so close graphically and played so smoothly at the time I thought it was a legitimate port from Nintendo to the Commodore 64, just with different music. So other systems were plenty capable but ya Nintendo really got a lot right with the Famicom/NES.
For my part in gaming machines I went Atari 2600, C64, Amiga 500, PC (386DX40) then concurrent with PCs SNES, PlayStation 2 then backtracked to Saturn, then Dreamcast then Wii. Haven't bought an actual hardware console since the Wii. Since then it's all PCs and emulation. I don't see that changing until the end of my days.
Your Basement is like my storage locker, but with much smaller bits. I've standardized on a particular storage box. The box gets a number, and everything that goes into that box goes on the spreadsheet, and tagged with that box number. I call this the "Archeological Filing System", as the older stuff is in lower numbered boxes...
I use colours, 3 colours (column, drawer, and 'section') and split up the drawers like you said (740x, 741x, etc in sections in the drawers, as few or many as needed in each drawer, keeping each number separate in the 'sections' rather than per drawer) then I have an Excel sheet, which I can search for the IC number, it tells me 3 colours, I can go straight to the column, drawer and section based on the colour given :) - the Excel sheet also keeps track of how many I 'should' have of each, and other 'notes' (such as specific version/manufacturer notes etc)
*edit*
Also, on the NES (At least here in the UK) it has two standard controller ports, and you could get a 'multi-tap' adaptor, that plugged into both, then it allowed up to 4 players, or two and a light gun etc!
Smash TV, was fun, as was Bomberman :D
I use multi drawer bins with resistive hard foam layers and ICs on each one. I sort by type (logic, register, bus, I/O etc) as I just do not have time to sort them all in a better order. Chances are that you will never touch/need most of them :)
The 8 pin Microchip DIPs are likely 12C series, these are microcontrollers. Most of the pic chips you got are really old.. I was using those EPROM type 15 series ones back in the late 80's, early 90's. Learning PIC peculiarities can be "fun". :/
For DIP up to 20, use a match box, just write the type no, on the end of the box, and then put them on the other end in a drawer, that way you can easily see what you have and it doesn't take up much space. TTL 74xxx and CMOS 40xxx its a grate way to store them, and have done that for many years now. 🙂
I have numerated boxes full of small bags of nylon or strong paper with ICs. all labeled. and outside every box ther is a list a list of the chips inside.
Also a notebook with the lists . but this time with a short description of every chip and sometimes equivalents.
because the all come form american, east german, Czhec, soviet, japanese and some more manufacturers
Back in the day, I notice my cousin storing his ICs and components, by pushing them into these half inch thick sheets/plates of styrofoam. I have managed to find some similar ones. Although not styrofoam, I am pretty sure that they were specifically intended for this, since they are antistatic and have a very similar consistency. I unfortunately don't recall the name or brand. But the idea is that by pushing the pins into the foam, they are quite well protected from getting bend or broken, and the labels always facing upwards means that they are easy to identify. These thin plates of foam are also really easy to precisely cut to the shape or size of drawers, and possibly even stack them too, depending on the depth of your drawers.
Please don't put chips on plain white styrofoam unless you want them to get zapped by static electricity. The anti-static stuff is conductive black open-cell foam, but there is also a pink closed-cell foam that is apparently anti-static, though not conductive, and pink bubble-wrap too.
@@8bitwiz_ Read the comment. I went out of my way to mention that what I use ISN'T styrofoam.
This is what is so frustrating with social media, this arrogant initial assumption, that everybody else just have to be dumber than yourself.
- If you do know of these products specifically created for this. Since it seems that I have forgotten, and they probably aren't named the same, here is the part of the world were I live anyway. How about actually contributing constructively by naming them instead... That would be far more helpful.
Use double-sided parts boxes. $16 each. Stackable and movable. When you need something you can just bring that part’s box over to the bench. You can also a build a small cabinet to slide each parts box in.
Would it be useful to use a 3D printer to create a tray system for holding IC's. It seems like something could be designed easily for organizing the IC's.
How i would do this is take picture of every chip. Then have Google lens and copy paste into a document. Devide it into sub sections.
Like memory bin 7
Part 1 {6}
Part 2 {28}
Then when you need a part you can search the number in the document and see amount and location.
Google lens could save you the brain rut from entering all the numbers into like excel by doing it on your phone just mark copy paste next part mark copy paste.
I use that but with entering costumer data when I'm working as it's allot of text that can't be copied. So I use one phone to take pictures of the other and then save to Adress book.
I think you will need to start with the broad strokes, like you mentioned 7400-7409, 7410-7419, etc, but assign these bins as you go. If you see a bin for, say 7400-7409, is getting full, start another bin for that. if you start running out of bins, you will need to combine adjacent bins. When done, go back to the multiple bins, like the 7400-7409 and see if you can reduce the ranges for each bin, like 7400-7402 and 7403-7409, or whatever makes sense.
Look at spinning up a part-DB server. Have each organizer as A, B, C. and each drawer in the organizer as 1-50. Look it up in the part-db, goto organizer D, bin 16. Plus it will import from the part info from digikey, mouser, and a few other sources or custom.
I would go with something like you said, the bins and the draws, kinda like a hardware store has with screws or how Radio Shack had their setup. You could have a draw for "X LOGIC" then you open the drawer and inside that it breaks it down a little more. Then you can have a digital inventory so when you want to look for something you can find what drawer/bin and if you have quantity when you pull one you can take it out and remove it from the inventory and if you realize you have 1000 of the same thing you can offload some items you know you will never use.
How far as how to separate it Im not sure. I would go a draw for CPUs, Logic, DRAM, Random, then inside those draws you can break it out like you said by pin count or chip model
If you have a spreadsheet you can also make a search that searches for what you have, and even if you wanted a way to compare whats compatible with one another. Of course you would have to do the back end leg work ( or I would be happy to do it for you, Im a dork that way)
Get the famicom keyboard, cassette player and basic cartridge as well. The accessories nixed in NA...
If it's not too inconvenient, a component-sorting montage video with youtube-safe music might work well on secondary channel. Either one long one, or split into multiples. Might help keep the revenue / upload schedule going if it doesn't slow down the organizing process too much.
Hint: SGS was an italian electronic company which merged with Thomson company to form what is now called ST Microelectronics.
I use little plastic bag in a box they are sorted one after the other like using envelope in a box !
I'd be game to watch a video on your organization/storage methodology in the basement. It would probably help give me and others ideas for storage solutions as well.
My storage technique: Keep parts in the Digikey bags they came in, wherever I put them down. Next time I need that part, just order more, because I have no idea where I left it. :-P
I figure, in 20 years, I (if I'm lucky) will clean up and discover a treasure trove of forgotten parts.
Don't forget to buy a good label maker. Yes, you can write your own labels but a label maker last longer than a marker and is easy to read.
Also, look into buying walls of those small drawers. They come from defunct factories. Maybe try to find the suppliers for those companies that sell bolts and nuts to companies who have a wide variety of them on hand at all times.
I think 50 drawers should be adequate for your 74xx series ICs. I have two 30-drawer bins for all of my 74 and 4000 series ICs (and I have more of these than any sane person should have.) They are arranged by increasing part number, typically with several parts per drawer, with one series of drawers for each family (74HC, 74HCT, 74LS, 4000, etc.)
With chips i make large sheets of soft rubber to put lots of them.
Then i mark the sheat nr one and make a excel base and type in all.
Now Easy to find in excel and what sheat (sheat that you push in the legs so they is stuck)
when you get them all sorted out someone will come along and dump them in a bucket to have a place to store their bobbin's and pins that happened to me once hahaha
About the large sheets of antistatic foam, sort the 74xx and 40xx by order of number in one vertical row, copies go in horizontal. That's how I've organized it. You can stack multiple sheets and put it in a drawer. Looking them up is pretty quick that way. I like those kind of sorting so I can spend hours doing this ;) For SMD there are antistatic books with compartments ie 12x12 compartments and you can put a sticker on and label them. They aren't cheap though but really handy to organize these chips because they are small.
You can do the same with other chips of course, but I'd order them either by type (ie eeprom, cpu, IO) or machine that they go into (Amiga, C64, Atari etc).
You could do a livestream organizing chips while answering in chat questions, that might work.
Maybe put your chips on foam, number the foam pads and take pictures. Apple photos for example does text recognition and makes the pictures searchable. This may be a posibility.
I would like to volunteer my time to help you out with your inventory but living in Cairns Australia makes it too long of a drive.
Yes, larger bins will help to reduce shelf space. How about combining large bins with anti-static sheets?
Cut anti-static sheets to size, populate one side with say 7400 series chips, the other side with 75002 chips. Place anti-static sheet into bin.
This adds more work to the initial organization process but will make it easier to find parts in the future.
You could add part labels on the edge of the ant-static sheets.
Why not use those PIC micros to build a fleet of indexing robots? Or perhaps a raspberry pi camera project?
Is that 6502-13 a 13MHz version? Didn't know they came that fast. Does it need a heat sink? Could it run in a game console that normally uses maybe a 2 or 5 MHz 6502? Would the console run any faster? Or damage the slower chips.
I guess I am asking if the timing clock circuit is on the cpu, or separate? Would the slower chips under clock the cpu.
For me the best way for LS gates is to have them in numbered bins by pin gate type like and, nand, nor, latches, buffers, timers, counters, etc. Then if you have a lot of one type you can split those in a separate bin. That has been the best for me, I tried the spreadsheet and failed miserably, what I do is have a small notepad to make a note when I use the last of one particular type.
One more if you have the pads of anti static foam I but them the size of the bins and put the chips in there is much easy to search trough them like that.
I think you need to use the slide latch to lock the cartridge in place when you use a Famicom
@@Aeoringas that’s an eject lever. 😂
Great topic. Would love to learn more about organization
Sounds like you need to have a chip sorting party. If I lived close I would totally come and help. My OCD would be very beneficial in this situation.
Use a hash algorithm to assign the parts to the drawers.
Can be quite simple, for example, for 10 drawers, take the last digit of the device number.
For 50 drawers, take the last two digits and have two of them for each drawer.
Try putting a range of parts per drawer. Put a label for part min. # to part max #. The idea is to be able to quickly get a sense of approximately which drawer the part is in. If it'[s not in the first pick, it will be in the neighbourhood. You will have to judge how many drawers to devote to which parts, based on the amount in your inventory. I buy quality metal boxes with plastic little see-through drawers from Costco and use a Dymo label printer with white plastic tape reels. I feel they work the best.
For sorting chips try
Antistatic foam an add three eyelets matching three ring binder
The small 6-pin DIP in white packages are not resistor packs, they are optocouplers.
I personally think you could actually make a video showing the start of the sorting and binning process and people would be interested in it to help others get started and all kinds of useful suggestions would flood in helping everyone. Just a thought.