On a sunny day (Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:00:32 -0600) it happened Frnak McKenney
wrote in
:

Which begs ( for ) the question: Has anyone attempted to develop a
method for identifying components simply from their characeristics?

Plug a BJT into a test socket, drive the pins, measure the traces,
feed the results into a database, and out pops...

"It's a 2N2222A, dummy!"

Hm... is there a way of testing ( say ) a BJT's BVce "gently", that
is, so that it doesn't _stay_ broken down?

Jes' curious.


Ferry Lon Taim AGOH I designed and build a transistor curve tracer.
Was just not much work, and boss wanted one.
To keep dissipation in limits you need to use low impulse duty cycle.
It could find NPN or PNP automatically.
No micros at that time, just relays and logic,
output to a normal xy scope.

I am sure with a PC these days you could look up things in a database,
and have a better display.