| Fairchild FLV101 LED | |
| Written by AnubisTTP on 2012-07-11 |
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The FLV101 was an obscure and short lived transitional part that was the predecessor to Fairchild's popular FLV102 light emitting diode indicator, shown below. An FLV101 is simply one of Fairchilds FLV100 fiber optic point indicators which has had it's top filed down in an attempt to diffuse the output to a level that would be useful for an indicator. The die in the FLV101 is extremely dim to begin with; the additional light loss caused by the diffused surface makes the LED useless as both a point indicator and a fiber optic source. As a result, the FLV101 was extremely short lived and was shunned almost totally by the electronics industry of the era. Note the superfluous third lead, a remnant of transistor packaging that was abandoned in later versions of this part
Fairchild FLV101 LED indicator, powered to nominal brightness.
Later versions of this part eliminated the superfluous third transistor lead and made use of a red-tinted epoxy coating.
Fairchild's first generation LED devices. From left to right: FLV102 LED, FLV101 LED, FLV100 LED, FPT100 phototransistor.
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