**Updated**Resistor and Cap charts - Check these out

***Edit*** - since the charts are out, I'm getting rid of the preliminaries here.

You can download the final version at:

Black and White charts

Color charts

So far, it looks good to me. It would address the issue that I raised with my own memory for the "Tropical Fish" markings on a capacitor. I also like the mnemonic, "BED". I remember BBROYGBVGW for the resistor code. Can anyone remember what that stands for? When I told my class that resistor code mnemonic, they could not believe. The army taught me that...

EDIT: I like the statement at the bottom, "Read both caps as pF"

Don Cavey wrote:I like the statement at the bottom, "Read both caps as pF"

Yeahbut... how do you convert that to microfarads? I'm not a theory guy...

dorpmuller wrote:

Yeahbut... how do you convert that to microfarads? I'm not a theory guy...

Move the decimal point six places to convert back and forth from microfarads to picofarads.

-Bill

Here is another one

Bad Booze Rots Our Young Guts, But Vodka Goes Well

Dave

The one that I remember is a little more "Not Politically Correct". Bad Boys ...

The only slight change I'd make would be on the blue fish list of caps. Instead of 630 volt, say 600 volt. They didn't have 630 volt caps then.
Otherwise, it looks great.
Zenith had their own system on disc caps I've never been able to crack in 50's, and, 60's.
I've seen 3 different color bodies, blue, yellow, and, red, with a letter of the alphabet.
I suspect colr of body was the voltage.

There are other odd ball caps I've seen, though, with two main color stripes, a colored body, and, a single color stripe that I think was tolerance.
They were tiny caps used in some tv's, and, at least one model of Newcomb record player of the 50's.
And, guess what. They have a tendency to be shorted.
They were apparently measured in picofarads.
Bill Cahill

dorpmuller wrote:Yeahbut... how do you convert that to microfarads? I'm not a theory guy...

Look at the bottom of the chart - that's what the F.mmm.µµµ.nnn.ppp is for (Notice the decimal places between the letters) The F is for farads, m for mili, µ for micro, n for nano, and p for pico. So lets say it's 6800 pf, that would be .0068 µF

I'll post updated versions tonight. I changed both cap charts so that both have the statement to read the value as pF, and also next to the F.mmm.µµµ decimal converter, I labeled what that is. On the resistor chart I did add a note on the dogbones that the dot may be a band.

I've got the change on the fish caps (600 v instead of 630) Also I added a note that I forgot that on 6 dot mica caps the first dot (A) is not part of the value, it's the type of cap, and what colors are what.

Ain't it great how all of the input comes flowing in? It really helps when you have more than one mind and many eyes checking out stuff. Often I forget something and get reminded and really appreciate it...

Bill Cahill wrote:The only slight change I'd make would be on the blue fish list of caps. Instead of 630 volt, say 600 volt. They didn't have 630 volt caps then.
Bill Cahill

...not to split hairs or anything, but I'm not so sure about that. 'Tropical Fish' caps were European (Philips/Mullard) in origin; I think they started making them in the late 1960s and continued to make them at least into the 80s (I used to have a Philips 22AR774 boom box from 1980 that was full of them). The 630 volt rating for caps, I believe, originated in Europe and I'm pretty sure they were using it at that time, before it became sort of an international standard...

I'm kind of finding both ways, so I think I will leave it as 600 for now.

Don Cavey wrote:The one that I remember is a little more "Not Politically Correct". Bad Boys ...

Well we can be politically correct and still circumvent that.

Bad Boys Ravish Our Young Girls But Violet Gleefully Waits
(sorry couldn't do grey or white)

Thats a very good set of Charts, Thank you for the effort!

There are a couple of points in your F.mmm.uuu.nnn.ppp that might be confusing for a newbie.
[1] In the older literature, the letter "m" was often used instead of the greek mu. Thus someone might conclude from your chart that ".01 mfd" means .01 milli-farads instead of .01 micro-farads. I don't think, in my 50 years in the hobby, I've ever seen a reference to "milli-farads," so maybe using "000" instead of "mmm" would be clearer?
[2] Maybe there should be a statement that mmfd = pfd?
[3] How about another chart explaining the modern capacitor notation? You know, where they print 103k to mean .01 mfd. Or is it .001 mfd? Lessee...where's my chart..................

I'm going to edit the original post to get rid of the charts shown.

There is another post that has the final charts - they explain the F.mmm.uuu.nnn.ppp. Also the second chart has modern disc caps.

Yes, I remember the non-PC version well. Another shortcut was the way to remember the symbols for NPN and PNP transistors; NPN stood for "Not Pointed iN".

There is another version of the "BED" code for the IRC insulated resistors which were heavily used by Philco, Scott, and Crosley, and many others; on those resistors, the colors are read the same way, the only difference being that the dot is usually a stripe. Very early ones will have a dot.

Tim KA3JRT