A Database of IC Chip Pin Outs  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ThermallyFrigid
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2021, 05:19:27 pm
content: Does a database of IC chip Pin Outs exist that would allow you to find IC chips with certain pin outs or pin outs that match or nearly match other IC chips?Would that even be feasible?

author: ThermallyFrigid
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2021, 03:37:19 am
content: Why not just use the commonly available manufacturers DataSheet ?Maybe we have different end goals in mind?I was just thinking if a database created by users like you and I.At a dedicated website where you have a unique account and after logging in, you can search for or input the PinOut information from the Datasheet.You could search for example by simply entering any combination of pins and their values and all IC chips matching whatever you enter would be displayed along with links to their respective PinOuts.I honestly don't even know if there would be any value in such a database. Maybe not.Two things brought me to think about it.1). Chips with the ID information shaved off the Chip2). Finding IC chips with similar or identical PinOuts.As an IT person all my life, I could easily set this up and make it publicly available. I just don't know if there would be any interest or value in itI would be more than happy to take recommendations on how it might work. Free. No charges at all. Just hope for contributions in the form of entering data on IC chips.Again, I realize this could be a really worthless idea.

author: ThermallyFrigid
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2021, 11:39:31 pm
content: Apparently.......Not a very popular idea.File 13 nd

author: Sandbank5961
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 15, 2022, 04:43:04 pm
content: Sorry to be late here.Yes, I think it can help some of us, electronics engineers with such a tool. I have been thinking about it for at least a year now. Some pins may have different names under different manufactures, such as IN vs VIN or ENABLE vs /SHUTDOWN (not shutdown) vs /STANDBY...My use case would be to look for alternative/cross parts...It could be provided as a webservice or as a python script/CLI/interface. In any case, I think it should be opensourced from the beginning, and be easily self hosted.There are some opensource libraries from which we could probably extract this info:Sparkfun:https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun-Eagle-LibrariesAdafruit:https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Eagle-LibrarySeeedstudio:https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/OPL_Kicad_Libraryhttps://github.com/Seeed-Studio/OPL_Eagle_Librarydigikey:https://github.com/Digi-Key/digikey-kicad-libraryhttps://github.com/Digi-Key/digikey-partner-kicad-librarykicad:https://gitlab.com/kicad/libraries/kicad-symbolshttps://gitlab.com/kicad/libraries/kicad-footprintsElement14:https://community.element14.com/products/eagle/

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2022, 06:00:58 pm
content: It seems to me that rather than deconstructing KiCad footprints, the entities that could do this kind of thing are the already-existing databases of footprint data: the cross-platform footprint companies (Ultra Librarian, SnapEDA, and SamacSys). They already have structured footprint data and export it to the various formats as needed. It’d probably be comparatively simple for them to add some kind of search.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2022, 10:43:14 pm
content: I have mentioned this idea once or twice before here too, but just never got around to do anything because of all the other things I have going on (don't we all...) It'd be very useful for repair, just like SMD marking code lookup sites.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2022, 11:18:14 pm
content: I would love if such a thing exists, best I have found is for power supplies...https://remont-aud.net/ic_power/(thanks to another poster on here)It seems it could be done by scraping through datasheets but requires a lot of manual filtering/sorting (though maybe a language classifier like GPT-3 could be used nowadays)

author: Infraviolet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 17, 2022, 11:42:56 pm
content: While I can't imagine it being of much ue beyond what one finds on a chip's datasheet in normal times... during a CHIP SUPPLY CRISIS the ability to find other chips with the same pinout (you're halfway through making a run of boards and have run out of some critical chip, which oh s*** isn;t back in stock until 2024...) as a chip of interest could be really valuable. I can only imagine that initial setup would be quite a lot of work, as it would involve going through hlots of different datasheets, classifying what parts are broadly equivalent in function and then noting these in to a searchable format for your database, but once running it would definitely be easy to use.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 18, 2022, 02:09:44 pm
content: Quote from: ThermallyFrigid on July 27, 2021, 05:19:27 pmYes, it used to be feasible. Sort of. Back when 14 and 16 pin TTL ICs were more or less standard, there were testers that you could plug unknown ICs into and it would attempt to identify them. But today there are so many different specialized and field programmable ICs and so many different families of ICs with different characteristics that it would most likely be impossible to account for all of them.But if you're working strictly with ICs from the 1970s and 80s and early 90s, an IC Master is a good place to start. Even with one of those, there were so many specialized ICs made by Harris and other specialty manufacturers even then that it was sometimes impossible to identify even marked ICs.In the old days you can use a Curve Tracer and other TE to determine which pins were power and ground and Input and Output with reasonably good results and then use a pattern generator and a logic analyzer to determine what the internal logic was. But once they started making ICs that used internal feedback to control the logic, that got very very difficult. And with PALs and GALs every circuit was custom and there were no more standard pinouts.Back when manufacturers liked to grind the markings off of IC and then put house numbers on them, a couple of friends of mine had access to diamond slitting saws, microscopes and other high grade equipment and they would grind the tops off of ICs and read the OEM markings off of the die and could identify ICs that way. They then reattached the IC top. One even had access to a wire bonding machine and could replace burnt out bond wires. He told me that that was the most common failure mode in ICs in those days.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 20, 2022, 09:53:28 am
content: https://archive.org/details/philips-ecg-semiconductors-master-replacement-guide-supplement-no-1-to-212-q-december-1992/mode/2up

author: joepeach
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 26, 2024, 04:50:26 pm
content: If you still looking for such a service -findthechip.commight be helpful