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[on:]

Greetings,
        Ever since I got my hands on an Arduino, I've seen electronics in a different light. I had some dead electronics laying around so I thought I'd dissect them and use them towards future projects. As I retrieved some capacitors, diodes, chips, transistors etc., now I can't seem to identify some of them. I'm kinda hoping just like how someone can accurately search for the name of a pill (medication) online. You could do the same for electronic components? Or perhaps there is another method. I'm new to this, I'm trying to learn but Google isn't helping.

          Thank you!

For example, how would I find information about this chip:
    Size/Shape: Rectangle
     Symbol: A diamond shape within a square outline
      Pins: 16 pin
       1st line of text: PS224U
        2nd line of text: H08918A1F

[Reply #1 on:]

go find the data sheet.
traditionally, putting an diode checker from gnd to vcc will test good at ~0.7V -- ~1.4v rev bias. Short is indicitve of short, OL indicates open.
not all chips test like that, but ma

family | Device | specific
ps           224         u
74         LS00        n
 etc.

some chips are proprietary, like black-boxes, some manufacturers use part numbers that overlap other manufacturers components.
sometimes looking for a chip, you cant find the exact number, so you can truncate the last few digits, like anything after a dash, to find the chip family data.

[Reply #2 on:]

Google "PS224" and the datasheet is the first item to come up. Googling works with many recent components but not some very old ones.
I can only see 8 pins in that photo. How did you get 16?

[Reply #3 on:]

some chips are proprietary, like black-boxes, some manufacturers use part numbers that overlap other manufacturers components.
sometimes looking for a chip, you cant find the exact number, so you can truncate the last few digits, like anything after a dash, to find the chip family data.

That makes perfect sense.

None of the chips I scavenged have a dash or anything of that nature. So when I found the "family", for the example chip above, "PS224". Stumped as to where to go from there. I suspect I should just trial and error or don't use them at all in that case.

Google "PS224" and the datasheet is the first item to come up. Googling works with many recent components but not some very old ones.
I can only see 8 pins in that photo. How did you get 16?

I found the results for PS224, but nothing for the second line of text. Back at square one.

That pic is just something pretty to look at. I do have some unidentified 8 pins as well though. 

[Reply #4 on:]

You will find that one line of text is normally a manafacturing date code. So if you find a sheet for one line that is it. Also try missing the letters off the end those are normally things like package type. Normally an IC is identified by letters, numbers

[Reply #5 on:]

If you can't find exact datasheet, you still should check out the one you do find. Some datasheets cover multiple similar chips.

[Reply #6 on:]

For identifying some of the smaller SMD devices I find the SMD Code Book very handy.

By matching the code to the package type and footprint you can sometimes identify what the component is.  It doesn't cover all the available components, of course, but it does cover a lot of common ones.

For instance, to pick one at random, an SOT143 chip with an "NQ" footprint (defined in the code book), with a code of "S7" on it is a BAT114-099 dual schottky diode.

[Reply #7 on:]

http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/
and type the part number you read

[Reply #8 on:]

What do you do when you can't find a chip's datasheet online?
I have a box of 14 pin devices marked TID D3406A. I know, from the logo on them that they're Texas Instrument chips (hence TID) but they're so old even the TI site has no trace of them. I've had them for years and suspect that they're DTL or DDL chips. I'll probable end up throwing them away, even if I can identify them.

[Reply #9 on:]

Thank you all for sharing. Moral of the story, buy your chips lol.