I have pulled a lot of boards apart over the years and must have ~ 500 chips or maybe closer to 1000. They range from the size of a Lm317 to a larger 40A Full Wave Bridge Rectifier.

What I need to do is separate them into categories but the thing is that I am pretty new to electronics so I'm not sure what categories would suit. I have a lot of parts from old power supplies, mother boards, TVs (all types), VCR's, Stereos, UPS battery backups, etc. Whatever I could find that had interesting parts.

So does anyone have any suggestions on how these should be categorized?

 

Some ic have multiple uses.

 

Why don't you just keep a list on a spreadsheet with device part number, device type and location, etc.

Find yourself some containers, anti-static if necessary, number them and use this for location and then you'll know what you have and where to find them.

 

I have pulled a lot of boards apart over the years and must have ~ 500 chips or maybe closer to 1000. They range from the size of a Lm317 to a larger 40A Full Wave Bridge Rectifier.

What I need to do is separate them into categories but the thing is that I am pretty new to electronics so I'm not sure what categories would suit. I have a lot of parts from old power supplies, mother boards, TVs (all types), VCR's, Stereos, UPS battery backups, etc. Whatever I could find that had interesting parts.

So does anyone have any suggestions on how these should be categorized?

Identify part numbers and start collecting data sheets. There are a few free data sheet sites on the Internet. One of my favorites is www.alldatasheet.com. Some pester you do buy, this one does not.

 

Most of the time, it is not worth removing the chips from the board unless you have an idea what they are and that you are going to use them soon. Otherwise I would just keep them with the boards and process them when I am looking for something particular.

 

Most of the time, it is not worth removing the chips from the board unless you have an idea what they are and that you are going to use them soon. Otherwise I would just keep them with the boards and process them when I am looking for something particular.

Where does education start? I would say he is on a good start.

 

Where does education start? I would say he is on a good start.

Not sure what you mean by that. What I tried to say is that you can look up the datasheets and learn everything you can about the chips without going through all the effort of getting them intact off the boards and filing them in drawers. Just put a sticker on the board with an ID and keep all the info you found about the components in a file on your harddrive.

 

In my younger days, I went through a phase like what you describe where I reclaimed parts from broken electronics and even sought out old electronics to scavenge components from. Some thoughts:

As you may already be doing, salvage things that make sense. I guarantee the first time you spend an hour debugging a circuit all because you used an ancient electrolytic cap that went bad, you will get what I mean, cheap electronics are cheap insurance. Some IC's now are so integrated they are horrible to try and figure out (hint, some are custom made for manufacturers, making documentation super-tricky to find).

Determine their purpose now, not later. When I need a part, it is usually because I am in the process of building a project. The last thing I want to do at that time is sift through a mountain of IC's to see if one is even remotely what I am looking for. If you cannot identify them by their manufacturing marks now, do you think you will later?

Now, to answer your question (yes, you had to read all that to get to this). I sort all of my electronics in drawers in ESD bags. Each drawer does not get its own part, but instead, one whole section of drawers is one category, while each drawer contains parts of a specific subcategory. This category and subcategory is listed on the front label. Example: One category I have, is Logic IC's. The subcategories are 7400, 74LS, 74HC, CD4000, ect. There may be 2 or 3 drawers that have all the 74LS parts, in ESD bags, with a label on the outside. You can do whatever categories you like, but I referenced digikey's hierarchy when coming up with my own. If you have a bunch of single parts, you may choose to make categories more like: Category- Voltage Regulators Subcategories- Fixed, Adjustable. Then for each subcategory, get an ESD bag and throw all the parts for that subcategory in the bag and throw it in a drawer.

Second, as someone else mentioned, I keep a master list of all of my parts (not passives necessarily, but IC's, microcontrollers, etc). Each category is a worksheet. Each subcategory has a heading, with the parts listed underneath, a quick description, the device package, and a hyperlink to the datasheet which I have downloaded and archived (directories by category and subcategory, as you may have guessed).

The beauty of this, is if I need a part, I can go to the spreadsheet, get to the general category, do a search or browse, then using the subcategory, I have to sift through very few parts to find what I need.

P.S. As a side note, something I always thought was interesting, in all my hours of pulling parts from boards, it was amazing how much I learned about the soldering process by desoldering parts and trying to keep them in-tact. Probably the most valuable part of the experience.