Anyone remember Towers International Transisitor Selector?
Towers International Transistor Selector is (or used to be) the electronics techie's best friend after his multimeter. It's a massive cross-reference of virtually every transistor ever made, their operating parameters and equivalent types from other makers. Of course now these youngsters have the internanny to bale them out but I tell 'ee, we 'ad it 'ard. You'd get to the workshop before it got light, make a cuppa by the warmth of a soldering iron plugged into a light fitting, put your back out lifting a telly/radiogram/microwave oven/fat bird's vibrator onto the bench, spend three hours getting the covers off, blow out a thousand dead spiders (mostly straight into your brew, which by now was cold anyway), give yourself five high-voltage shocks from the various charged bits, cut yourself a few times on jagged edges of stamped steel chassis, rummage through ten thousand manuals to find a circuit diagram (which inevitably was for the Mk. 2 version when you had a Mk. 1 in front of you), take a few thousand volts more up your arm (or better still, across your chest) just for a laugh, trace the entire board to find a thruppeny transistor blown, read ---- from cover to cover to find an equivalent, phone every supplier in the whole world to discover there wasn't one in stock anywhere then pinch one that was 'close enough' from the secretary's Alba transistor radio while she was off-loading last night's chicken korma.
Then you'd solder it in the wrong way round, apply power, hear the pop, see the smoke and quietly put the whole pile of cack back on the 'Goods In' shelf for someone else to sort out on Monday morning
Towers International Transistor Selector is (or used to be) the electronics techie's best friend after his multimeter. It's a massive cross-reference of virtually every transistor ever made, their operating parameters and equivalent types from other makers. Of course now these youngsters have the internanny to bale them out but I tell 'ee, we 'ad it 'ard. You'd get to the workshop before it got light, make a cuppa by the warmth of a soldering iron plugged into a light fitting, put your back out lifting a telly/radiogram/microwave oven/fat bird's vibrator onto the bench, spend three hours getting the covers off, blow out a thousand dead spiders (mostly straight into your brew, which by now was cold anyway), give yourself five high-voltage shocks from the various charged bits, cut yourself a few times on jagged edges of stamped steel chassis, rummage through ten thousand manuals to find a circuit diagram (which inevitably was for the Mk. 2 version when you had a Mk. 1 in front of you), take a few thousand volts more up your arm (or better still, across your chest) just for a laugh, trace the entire board to find a thruppeny transistor blown, read ---- from cover to cover to find an equivalent, phone every supplier in the whole world to discover there wasn't one in stock anywhere then pinch one that was 'close enough' from the secretary's Alba transistor radio while she was off-loading last night's chicken korma.
Then you'd solder it in the wrong way round, apply power, hear the pop, see the smoke and quietly put the whole pile of cack back on the 'Goods In' shelf for someone else to sort out on Monday morning
