I miss catalogs
Some one uploaded (to archive.org) Digi-key's last catalog from 2011 as a 137 MB pdf file:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120629032030/http://pdfcatalog.digikey.com/US2011/digikey.pdf
It's nice to be able to page through a catalog, even a pdf, to find something. Searching is wonderful but only if you know the exact name of what you want. Also it's nice to be able to see not only the vendor you usually use but also other vendors of similar items.
One example: cable ties with mounting hole. Searching Mouser.com for cable tie mounting hole provides 167 possibilities none were what I envisioned. So changed the search to just cable ties. Then drilled down by specifying nylon material, cable ties with mounts, screw mount and finally got what I wanted. I am sure that just looking at the cable tie section of a paper or even pdf catalog would have been easier.
Who knew there was a connector vendor called: ASSMANN ? Not me until I ran across their listed items in the Digi-key catalog.
One thing that I wonder is how, with a dynamic internet with prices floating up and down, will people in the future know what we were paying for items in the 2020s ? For example, I somehow realized (it would have been easier with a catalog) that the box used for the Knightkit LC-1 CPO in the 1960s was still available in 2021 from the Davies Molding company in the Chicago area. This is a phenolic box with 4 brass threaded inserts to secure a metal top/chassis. The Allied catalogs
on the World History Site show these boxes (although the vendor isn't called out) with prices.
 |
| presumably these are Davies boxes |
When I plugged those prices into the inflation caculator I found that the currently available box is almost exactly the same price as it was in the 1960s !
There is no way that the internet archive can take a full snapshot of a dynamic site like Digi-key or Mouser, it's gone almost as soon as it's been posted.
And it's not just electronics catalogs that were useful, something like the McMaster-Carr catalog was AMAZING. As I recall it had a yellow soft cover and literally hundreds and hundreds of pages of EVERYTHING. I can recall needing felt at work. McMaster-Carr had it, 1/2 inch thick sheets of wool (we used it for offset printing part numbers on integrated circuits). There is one McMaster catalog from 2012 on archive.org:
https://archive.org/download/mcmaster-118_202012/mcmaster-118.pdf
898 MB, over 3700 pages ! McMaster-Carr had a warehouse across the tollway from where I used to work in the Chicago area (Automatic Electric). McMaster-Carr had the felt in stock ! I got the paperwork through purchasing and was able to go over and get it at their will call the same day - amazing.
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm