Help understanding pins on transistors.?

Question

Hi ~ I'm just starting to learn electronics. The book that came with my 300 in 1 kit says that, when looking at the flat side of a transistor, the legs are emitter, COLLECTOR, base from left to right, but every other website and starter guide shows them as emitter BASE collector. The circuits in the 300 in 1 seem designed to work based on the ecb configuration. I'm kinda confused. These transistorsistors are PNP and NPN if that makes any difference. Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Emitter is always at the center.but even without haveing any data sheet you can understand it's pins by using a simple ohmmeter. the base to collectro and base to emitter is like diode.you can test them two by two and find the base.

Answer 2

I always thought the center pin was the base and that the emitter and collector are reversible. So either EBC or CBE are fine. A PNP transistor has a negative base and a NPN has a positive base.

I think they goofed. Must be a typo.

Answer 3

Does your kit includes the part number for the device you have ?
Are you familiar with the package you are getting ? Is the package to-92 or To-220 ?

Typically, most of the transistors are compatible across different manufacturer. But there are exceptions. You should try to see if you can find the device marking on the transistor and do a search on the web for the list of manufacturer.


Also, you can use a diode measurement of a mulit-meter to check the diode drops direction on the package. You should be able to ID the base pin.

Answer 4

There are many different pin-out for transistors (well, all the possible combinations!), and both of those you mention are possible.
The only way to know is to check the data-sheet of THAT particular transistor.
At least, the transistor should have some markings (its number, such as 2N3906).
Go to Zetex, National Semiconductor, Philips, Maxims, Motorola sites and get the data-sheet, or give me the number of the transistor, I'll give you the pinout.