Components Data Books

[tony duell]

> Yes! I am totally with you; just being able to flip through the books and
> peruse a broad swath of the vendor's product line, has the potential to

Precisely... I haven't a clue what is available now, other than the really common
parts the local suppliers stock. You just can't go to a website and hope to find
what is really available.

[...]

> text editor or whatnot to fire up Acrobat Reader ... It _is_ nice to have
> the ability to Google a random part number and get an ID back 99% of the
> time but when I am actually working with the part, yeah, it's so nice to

Oh, don't get me wrong. It is useful to be able to find data on the web. When
I have an obscure part it is a lot easier than trying to work out which data book
to buy and where to get it from

Mind you, I don't find google very useful. 99%+ of the hits are companies that
claim to be able to supply the device. Considering the one time I contacted such
a company about an obscure custom IC they asked me what package and how
many pins (for a device that had only ever existed as a 22 pin DIL),  I got
very suspicious as to what they would actually be supplying...

I find http://www.datasheetarchive.com/ to be a good first place to look.

But IMHO on-line data sheets should be in adition to paper data books, not
a replacement for them.

I have never found a computer which can display the pages of a .pdf as 
fast as I can flip through a book. And no, I don't just mean classic computers ;-)

> have paper... When I'm doing a project, most of my schematics start out on
> scraps of paper, too :O

That's all I ever use (well, maybe not scraps...). I call it a 'Paper Aided Design' system,
aka a 'PAD'. 

-tony