Parts files

The replacement PCB for the Canon P170-DH calculator is the largest electronic hobby project I've attempted, when measured in terms of the number of distinct parts. The excellent Interactive BoM tool for KiCad makes it easier to place all the parts of a given type, but keeping track of where those parts are was becoming a bit of an ordeal.

My usual scheme is to keep all the parts for a given project in one of the cardboard shipping boxes from Digi-Key. It immediately became apparent that this wasn't going to work for this project; there are just too many distinct part types. First I sorted them into groups of like part types: capacitors, inductors, resistors, and active components, placing each type in its own box. I tried to keep each box sorted by component value, but the boxes were too large to keep them from sliding around and randomizing themselves.

As I sat down to start placing components on the lower portion of this board I thought to myself that there had to be a way to keep these things sorted better. As I thought about the various filing systems I could buy at my local office supply store it occurred to me that these envelopes were about the same width as a 5.25" floppy disk.

Yes, children, near the dawn of (computer) time, 5.25" floppy disks were the storage media of choice for PCs everywhere. I've long since thrown out the disks, but I still had a couple of floppy filing boxes holding miscellaneous junk I hadn't used in years. Anyone need a 3.5" initial boot floppy for installing Windows NT? After tossing the junk and cleaning out the dust and cobwebs I filled them with parts envelopes:

Voilà! No more parts confusion. Capacitors and inductors on the left. Resistors on the right. All sorted by value and size, and they stay sorted. I knew these boxes would come in handy someday.

These aren't exactly static-protective, and I wouldn't put active components in them except in static-protective bags. But there are far fewer active types than passives.