When you order 74 series ICs from DigiKey (or wherever) you typically get a link to a PDF datasheet, invariably one of the recent TI ones. I'm getting really tired of printing them out and shuffling them around. Also, I don't really like the TI sheets. The pins have weird names and the descriptive text is poorly written. I want to get a vintage 74 series data book that I can just plunk down on the bench next to my project and put thumb tabs in. Some of them are a bit pricey - for example, $50 for the 1988 74HC databook from TI! I know Garth as a whole stack of vintage data books, and I suspect others do too. Before I pony up my hard-earned beer money I'm curious to know which ones stand out as particularly well done.

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"The key is not to let the hardware sense any fear." - Radical Brad

The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill has a chapter (10 I think) on the various 74 series ICs. It's well worth a read if you need a reference manual. It's not as detailed as a datasheet for a specific IC but has good general information on the various logic families. I still print out datasheets so I can have them next to me when I'm working; somehow a monitor is just not the same.

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

This is exactly what I was thinking. Having useful period app notes that I can sit down in a chair and read, instead of trying to juggle PDFs, is also a plus.
Ai! Ai! A balrog is come!


I'm pretty decent at rustling up used books on various web-sites. I'll keep an eye out for those NSC data books. There are definitely some on eBay; but I wasn't sure if they covered 74 series or just 4000 series, because the description just said "CMOS." Now I know!


This is not my way.

In addition to the advantages you mention, a lot of my TI printouts don't have page numbers or title headers, so when a whole stack falls off of my bench, I can't tell which pages go together, or what order they go on!

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"The key is not to let the hardware sense any fear." - Radical Brad

I used to have a few dozen of the National data books, but alas most of them got misplaced/lost during a move about 30 years ago.

I like books.

What I do today is print out some relevant spec sheet pages and put them in 3-ring binders. I also put a small laptop with a BIG screen on my soldering/assembly bench for quick look-ups and displaying layouts and schematics.

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Bill

Two books I really miss are the TI 74 series 'yellow' book, and the Motorola CMOS 'blue' book. Both an inch thick, both hopelessly out of date, but I still wish I had them around. Mind you, it's depressing how many useful parts died between 74LS days and today

Rule one on any project: grab the datasheets (I like Nexperia for their explanations slightly better than TI) and store them in the project folder. Even if I already have them. Even if they're three thousand pages long - looking at some of the ARM microcontrollers - it's still work keeping them local.

Neil

Since I started this thread, I did track down a few data books, including the TI yellow book you mention. Mine is from 1984; I'd really like to get the 1989 one (I have a PDF copy of it on my desktop), but it is a bit hard to find it seems. I also got the National / Fairchild one that Garth recommended above. It was expensive, but it has a "NAVAL ECM DEPARTMENT" sticker on it, which is cool. I also got a Signetics one, just because it was cheap and I liked the cover. They're all useful, but the TI one is the only one that has ALL the ICs I'm using (`377, `590, and so on). It is really nice to be able to have one or the other of them open on the desk right in front of me while I'm connecting pins!

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"The key is not to let the hardware sense any fear." - Radical Brad