Your schematic collection

[Ge_Whiz]

I see - many members of this 'analogue' effects site store their schems digitally, and only a few of us store them in 'analogue' (paper) mode. A case of double standards, I feel!

[It was just a joke. Please don't feel obliged to put me right in a condescending manner, anyone.]

[Mark Hammer]

How it's stored depends on when you started.  Long before I had a scanner, and long before there was stuff on the web (or indeed, even a web), I would go to a university library whenever I was visiting a school I hadn't been at before, buy myself a $10 copycard, hit the TK section of the library (and whatever the call numbers are for electronic music and synthesis) and burn my retinas out at the Xerox machine.  Then there are all those Craig Anderton and John Carruthers columns from Guitar Player and Contemporary Keyboard, and Tom Henry's articles, and all those nifty circuit collections from ETI and Elektor, etc. etc.  I have neither the time nor patience to scan the backlog of all that stuff in and none of it is available on line, so in the binders it goes.  I'm certain that many of Ton's binders contain service manuals and factory schems for things that have never been available electronically, as well as ideas scribbled on paper.

Incidentally, I see I'm not the only person in the world whose soldering technique requires the presence of small containers of nuts. :wink:

[puretube]

err, for the smaller PCBs there are also little tomato-paste, and for the larger tube-PCBs bigger Parmesano bins...

Binders: let me count... : 21 own stuff...28 patent files... 5 concentrated "Funkschau" mag excerpts,... 12 "Elektor"-ditto, a couple various other old mag copies (covering the past 70 years of broadcast & audio),...a dozen misc., ...2 FX from the web, ...3 tube-stuff from the web...

Organization: roughly TV/radio/audio/HiFi/studio/test&measure/tube-amps(SE/PP/OTL)/instruments/synths/sampler/drum/fx/tube-fx/mechanix...
(some of them sub-divided...).

Of course a large arsenal of ANs, datasheets & schemos (fer nothing...) that people chose to post on the web over the last 6 years ...completely dis-organized and scattered across several HDs, and a nightmare to find... :roll:

[rubberlips]

Incidentally, I see I'm not the only person in the world whose soldering technique requires the presence of small containers of nuts. :wink:

I modified my jar a few years back and bolted a large paper clip to the lar to hold the boards. Also great when you're missing a screw to mount a board  :wink:

Pete

[Mike Burgundy]

I  have a disk-based archive ordered into studio/amps/effects/misc/datasheets, subdevided in brandnames and (for non-brand schems) functionality.  That bunch is now a little under 500Mb, but I regularly archive the lot on CD and clean out that partition. Problem is, I keep storing those CD's where I can't find them.... There should be about 5 of them, running from Jamie Heilman's schem archive to current dates.

While bins of nuts are useful, cups of coffee are a necessity.

who of you is lucky enough to have a workspace taht you *can leave fully populated with half-finished gear*? Who gets chased off the kitchen table every day?


now playing: Porcupine Tree - arriving somewhere, but not here

[TheBigMan]

Around 150mb on my hdd which I am reminded to backup by this thread.  :oops:

[troubledtom]

my computer went down and i lost everything. lame but true.
       :cry:
             - tt

[scratch]

A binder for Schems, a binder for spec sheets, and a binder for appnotes.

Misc. downloads on the PC, for most I try to print out ... I too prefer hard copy to scribble notes on or to take to the bench when I'm trying to work something out.

[Mark Hammer]

my computer went down and i lost everything. lame but true.
       :cry:
             - tt

Oy....Can I send you a CARE package?  PM me.

[object88]

I'm pretty new to the game, so I haven't collected that much data (yet).  I have several articles printed out (mostly so I could read them on the local mass transit, in bed, or at a cafe.  These tend to be of the "Technology of..." or "Beam Pentode Devices" (circa 1960-something) variety.  I also have several PDF'ed versions of old manuals on my work and home machines.  There are a very scant few schematics laying around on my harddrives, but so few that it would hardly be considered a loss if they blipped out of existance.  The manuals, though, I should print out, and if I'm very nice to myself, put into a binder for proper storage.  

There are too few actual documents to be too concerned with organization at this point.  There would be more folders than documents!  

As for a perminent workbench, I am that lucky.  My wife wouldn't have it any other way... mostly because she knows I'll wait until 15 minutes before guests come to dinner to clean up. :oops:  And actually, she's really that awesome of a person, to want to support my habit.  

[vanhansen]

I don't know what happened but I got in to this fun last fall and my schematic collection has exploded.  I'm not sure how much I have but it's nowhere near what some of you have.  If I had to guess, it's probably a little over 100MB.  I break them out by manufacturer / designer.  Layouts and wiring diagrams are in separate folders as well.  I have datasheets and design tools too, charts, calculators, articles, anything that will be of help to me.

[jmusser]

I haven't been at it as long, so I just have a large Tupperware container bulging at the seams! I'm supposed to get a file cabinet from my sister-in-law before long to try to get it all organized. one thing I have tried to do, is keep all my circuit builds in one folder, so it has all my notes and mods in it. If there was correspondence to go along with it, then I keep all that for each circuit, so I can remember how it all evolved, and how I came up with the end result. It don't take too many builds to totally loose track of why you did something a certain way. It also helps a lot when someone has a question, because I can refer them to a post where it was discussed previously. That keeps down a lot of the repeat performances. If someone is just joining, it's all new, and they may not have enough background to even know what they want to search for in the archives. I know, because I have been there, and people were kind enough to help me, and i like to give back.