The 7400 series of TTL integrated circuit SSI devices were historically important as the first widespread family of IC devices. Modern variants of the family are still used today for glue logic and sometimes in consumer electronics.
Early 7400 series parts were constructed using bipolar transistors, although most newer sub-series use CMOS technology or a combination of the two (BiCMOS). Originally the bipolar circuits provided higher speed but consumed more power than the 4000 series of CMOS devices. Bipolar devices are also limited to a fixed power supply voltage, typically 5V, while CMOS parts often support a range of supply voltages.
Milspec rated devices for use in extreme conditions are available as the 5400 series. A shortlived 6400 series was rated for an intermediate (industrial) temperature range.
The 7400 family contains many hundreds of devices that provide everything from basic logic gates to special purpose bus transceivers and Arithmetic Logic Units (ALU). Specific 7400 functions are described in a list of 7400 series integrated circuits.
The 14-pin DIP shown to the right is an example of a 7400 part. The chip contains four two-input NAND gates. Each gate uses two pins for input and one pin for its output. The two additional contacts supply power (+5 V) and connect the ground. The former Soviet Union manufactured the analog K155ЛA3 which was pin-compatible with the 7400 part available in the United States. It was not unusal to see this digital chip in analog circuits like Schmitt triggers, various generators and even some voltage stabilizers. In analog applications the element inputs were connected together and element was used as some kind of the voltage amplifier, balancing the input voltage on the boundary of the logical threshold.
Many parts in the HC, AC, and FC families are also offered in "T" versions (HCT, ACT, and FCT) which have TTL-compatible input thresholds. The non-T parts have CMOS input thresholds.
The 74L family is a relatively low-power, but slower version of the 74 family.
The 74H family is the same basic design as the 7400 family with resistor values reduced. This reduced the typical propagation delay from 9ns to 6ns but increased the power consumption. The 74H family provided a number of unique devices for CPU designs in the 1970s.
The 74S family, using Schottky circuitry, uses more power than the 74, but is faster. The 74LS family of ICs is a lower-power version of the 74S family, with slightly higher speed but lower power than the original 74 family; it became the most popular variant once it was widely available.
The 74F family was introduced by Fairchild Semiconductor and adopted by other manufacturers; it is faster than the 74, 74LS and 74S families.
Through the late 1980s and 1990s newer versions of this family were introduced to support the lower operating voltages found in newer microprocessor and personal computer CPU devices.
Although the 7400 series was the first de facto industry standard TTL logic family, there were earlier TTL logic families such as the Sylvania SUHL family, Motorola MC4000 MTTL family (not to be confused with RCA CD4000 CMOS), the National Semiconductor DM8000 family, and the Signetics 8200 family.
The 7400 NAND gate was the first product in the series.
The 5400 and 7400 series were used in many popular minicomputers in the Seventies and early Eighties. The DEC PDP series 'minis' used the 74181 ALU as the main computing element in the CPU. Other examples were the Data General Nova series and Hewlett-Packard 21MX, 1000, and 3000 series.
Hobbyists and students equipped with wire wrap tools, a 'breadboard' and a 5-volt power supply could also experiment with digital logic referring to how-to articles in Byte Magazine and Popular Electronics which featured circuit examples in nearly every issue.
As of 2006, individual chips can be purchased for approximately 0.25 USD each, depending on the particular chip. Purchased in bulk the price per unit falls to even lower prices per package.
Integrated circuits | Digital electronics
74xx | Seria 7400 | 7400 (mikroschema)
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