Sovtek ICs

Sovtek 7474 IC

I wasn’t aware that Sovtek ever made ICs. Then again, it might not be the Sovtek which is so well known for its guitar parts and tubes and whatnot. Beyond that 7474 there (and it’s eight or so peers) I’ve also got a couple of 7410 parts.

So, where did I get them?

Well, my coworker Jeff had, sometime in the mid 90s, attended one of the local ITT Tech schools. As part of this he received a rather large toolcase which he used to store the electronics parts and tools he used. A few weeks back he told me that I could have his old breadboard, which would be quite handy as I’ve started to find my current one a bit cramped at times. Well, instead of giving me just the breadboard, he gave me the entire case full of stuff, including cables, trays of ICs, and a whole bunch of loose parts.

Tonight I spent some time cleaning out the case, throwing out all the loose resistors, electrolytic caps (I’m not stupid enough to keep mid-90s caps), bits of wire which aren’t of the heavy / pre-tinned version designed for breadboard jumpers, plastic bags, and the other hard to identify / low cost / broken parts. What was left over should be quite handy, especially because I’ve had a strong desire to do some things with discreet logic.

These parts include:

· The aforementioned ICs.
· A large handful of ceramic caps.
· Twenty or so mixed inductors.
· Loads of Pomona cables, typically for connecting to multimeters with BNC connections.
· The really nice, large breadboard.
· Lots and lots of ICs, mostly 74 series, ADCs, and opamps, many of brands I’ve never heard of.
· Mixed older optoelectronics.
· Logic probe and pulser.
· Other stuff, which I’m sure I’m forgetting, but looked useful so it wasn’t tossed…

So, this should be pretty neat. I might finally have enough parts laying around to play with doing some things with discreet logic. Now… What? It would be interesting to maybe design a small tabletop analog synth. Maybe something like the PAiA FatMan but easier to build, in a better case, possibly lower cost, and wholly open source. Hmm… After the audio switch, of course, and the (likely) for-pay project that I’m hoping to wrap up soon as well.