John Larkin wrote in
:

On Sun, 17 May 2020 14:15:31 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
wrote:

Gentlemen,

I have some old OC171 transistors from an old Eddystone short wave
radio I'm restoring. The problem is I suspect they've developed
whiskers, as the resistance readings from e,c and b to the screen
connection are all far too low (sub 10 ohms). A colleague has
suggested blasting the whiskers by tying the ecb leads together
and zapping them against the screen with a 500nF cap charged to
500VDC. Now this seems a bit counter- intuitive to me and I'd have
thought higher current lower voltage would be safer for these
delicate germanium devices, but WTF do I know? Is it feasible to
remove the whiskers by this sort of method or any other?

Thanks,

CD

Does anyone still make ge transistors? I can't think of any use
for them.

The only production ge devices I know of (excepting SiGe) are back
diodes, which I think are the only germanium parts fabricated
using lithography.


Also as a side note to the title of this entire thread...

'Vintage transistors' were NOT 'tin plated' like todays parts are.
They were Nickel Cadmium plated. A far superior plating but with
carcinogenic dangers that caused Cadmium and Cadmium alloys to be
banned. But you can still buy, eat and die from Beryllium parts.