Create your own colection

Photographing your chips

Taking pictures of hundreds of chips can be very time consuming. Automate as much as possible, come up with repeatable routines.

• My set up.
  • LED ring magnifying desk lamp. With magnifying glass removed and mobile phone attach in the center.
  • White paper with x for center and line for alignment
  • Mobile phone camera with app to control from computer. I use scrcpy
  • Graphics editor: GIMP
    • specifically using measurement tool to straiten, and crop to crop

• My technique may not work best for you, but try to automate as much as possible

Tips for improving label visibility

• Engraved metal:
  • Rub a pencils graphite in the text then wiping off excess. This may take some experimenting with different harnesses and amount of wiping. fingers work well for wiping but is messy
  • Polish the metal
• Engraved plastic:
  • move you lighting to one side instead of surrounding all sides. Might need a sharp angle, will add shadows in text.
  • wipe baby powder in engraved test. this will take experimenting to get right
• Printed text:
  • Cleaning the chip can help, but be very careful with which cleaner you use. Isopropyl alcohol is generally safe, but even scrubbing with water can sometimes remove text

Upload images to the web

• Wikimedia Commons: accepts images with mid or high resolution and free/open license
• http://www.chipdb.org/
• CPU-World: images can be added to each chips page in the comments section
• Flickr: create you own account make your own albums
• Any other photo sharing site: pinterest, etc

Storage

• Coin envelops, anti-static bags
  • small PGA, PLCC, CLCC, BGA, or any surface mount chip packages
  • The easiest storage I've found is coin envelopes. they are ridged, so tend not to bend pins and are easy to label and stack. They are not anti-static, but you can buy resealable anti-static bags in bulk for any size. Then I make boxes to fit the envelopes. Similar to baseball card boxes but the envelops are vertical instead of horizontal.
• Anti-static tubes
  • DIP, CLCC, and PLCC chip packages
  • anti-static tubes are easily available
  • I store my DIPs in anti-static tubes or anti-static high density foam
• Anti-static high density foam
  • DIP, PGA, and any other through-hole chip packages
  • I store PGAs with anti-static high density foam protecting pins, and stacked horizontally in baseball card boxes
  • Large pieces of foam can be used to store a bunch of chips on one sheet

Repair/Clean up chip

Cleaning

• Be careful cleaning, be very careful with which cleaner you use. Isopropyl alcohol is generally safe, but even scrubbing with water can sometimes remove text
• micro-fiber cloth can be good or bad. Be careful

Straighten bent pins

• The best way I've found is to use a empty mechanical pencil. Slide the bent pin in the tips hole and straighten it, gently.

Buying Chips

• CPU-World forum - For Sale/Trade (collectable items): Best place to buy
• https://ebay.com a decent place to find chips