It's not just the eyes that can't distinguish colors on resistors.
Manufacturers can't produce any quality control on the colors themselves
anymore.  Violet is brown, Brown is purple, Red is purple, and white is
grey.  Combine that with a 1/8th watt resistor being so tiny, and the marks
themselves very thin, and they are unreadable. When all resistors were 1/2"
in diameter and they used quality inks this system made sense.  They might
as well just not mark them at all.

I hired a new guy as a tech a few years back, and put him the first day
sorting resistors into one of those little drawer cabinets.  It wasn't until
the second day he told me he was colorblind.  I am still finding 10K
resistors in the 100K bin and so on.

--Lawrence

----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Wiley" <gwiley@GWILEY.COM>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 8:09 PM
Subject: Re: [PIC]: nF vs. 1000pF


> On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 07:52:44PM -0600, michael brown wrote:
> <snippitey snip>
> > anything.  How come they don't write the value on resistors?????  I'm
> > getting older (40 in a couple of months) and I can't distinguish the
colors
> > as well as I could when I was a kid.  Now I have a magnifying glass to
read
> > diode numbers and other fine print.
> >
> >
> <snip>
>
> I agree - that is why me and my "fluke" are best friends.  I don't
> trust what I see on the parts anymore.  Caps and resistors get to
> visit the DMM.
>
> --
> Glen Wiley
> Application Technology, Core Processes IT
> Capital One Financial Services
>
> Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
> simpler. -- Albert Einstein
>
> --
> http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic:
> [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads
>
>

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics
(like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics