> Yes! I am totally with you; just being able to flip through the books and > peruse a broad swath of the vendor's product line, has the potential to
Precisely... I haven't a clue what is available now, other than the really common parts the local suppliers stock. You just can't go to a website and hope to find what is really available. [...] > text editor or whatnot to fire up Acrobat Reader ... It _is_ nice to have > the ability to Google a random part number and get an ID back 99% of the > time but when I am actually working with the part, yeah, it's so nice to Oh, don't get me wrong. It is useful to be able to find data on the web. When I have an obscure part it is a lot easier than trying to work out which data book to buy and where to get it from Mind you, I don't find google very useful. 99%+ of the hits are companies that claim to be able to supply the device. Considering the one time I contacted such a company about an obscure custom IC they asked me what package and how many pins (for a device that had only ever existed as a 22 pin DIL), I got very suspicious as to what they would actually be supplying... I find http://www.datasheetarchive.com/ to be a good first place to look. But IMHO on-line data sheets should be in adition to paper data books, not a replacement for them. I have never found a computer which can display the pages of a .pdf as fast as I can flip through a book. And no, I don't just mean classic computers ;-) > have paper... When I'm doing a project, most of my schematics start out on > scraps of paper, too :O That's all I ever use (well, maybe not scraps...). I call it a 'Paper Aided Design' system, aka a 'PAD'. -tony
