Does anyone know of an "easy" to cross reference IC's based off their markings? I'm starting to "strip" parts off items to use in projects and I'm finding the smaller the package size the less the numbers they're using. Anyone have any tips and tricks for component IDing? 
Thanks.
Life would be so much easier if you can get one of those SMD tweezers.
Anyone have any tips and tricks for component IDing?
Something to keep in mind, which has always been done in electronics for a number of years, is the concept of "house markings".
What this means is that a company making a board will have the company making the components put part numbers on the parts that match up with a reference that the board company has, but doesn't reference to anything that you or I have access to. Many time, when these companies go "belly up", the surplus goes to surplus dealers who will sell "NPN transistors - house marked" - but you have little to no idea about any performance numbers or whatnot to tell you whether they will work in your application.
There is almost no way to get at those cross referencing data, either. Even if the company is still in business, they won't give you any of that data - its a way of making the board a "black box" to prevent competitors from reverse engineering a device (not that it really stops this, but in the business world, they think it does).
I wouldn't be surprised if SMT parts were done the same way - in fact, it is probably cheaper, since there no way to mark them anyhow due to their size, and they come off a tape/reel which is ordered - if you're lucky, there's polarity markers on the ones that need them...
Since in SMT work, a transistor can look just like a regulator, and a capacitor just like a resistor and an inductor - if there aren't any workable markings, you are probably hosed, unless you have access to a variety of test equipment and know how to use it. But this method is time consumming; ultimately, it would be cheaper to just buy the parts, so you know what they are, and what their spec is.
I still think one of those automatic SMD tweezers will be able to identify the parts (i.e. whether it is a resistor/diode/capacitor, etc.) for you, but if you are not using SMD components that much, it probably does not worth the investment.
Give this site a try --
(* jcl *)
www: http://www.wiblocks.com
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[edit]I still think one of those automatic SMD tweezers will be able to identify the parts[/edit]
Something like that would be helpful; there also appears to be a few project blogs out there detailing how to build such a set of tweezers for an auto-ranging multi-meter:
They would at least give values (and types?) for "unknown" parts, which may be enough for most uses.
That is one of the better sites for referenceing the marks on SMD parts. It's amazing how many are "real" ID marks, but sometimes the same mark will be for difference type chips from different manufs.
Resistors are marked really good - not only to value, but to tolerance also.... but they do vary sometimes. Most are marked good.
Caps and inductors are very seldom marked and you must use a meter to test. There are some cheap tweezer probes on ebay now at $3.50 shipped that allows easy testing using a DVM that has a capacitance spot. Most of these DVms only test for cap values above 1nF up to several uF.
If you wish to spend a bit more money there are some NICE cap/inductor/resistor meters out there for testing. Those run from $40 to $400!
Ken H>