Resistor Colour Code Translator
Steve Hunt

Resistor is an application that will help you to choose the right resistor when working on your next electronic project.

Double-clicking on the application icon (two resistors) will install it on the Icon bar; the usual Info and Quit menu options are available. Clicking on the Icon bar icon will open up the Resistor window which shows a resistor body, and below it a colour chart. The value of the resistor is displayed in a writable field on the resistor body.

You can use Resistor in two ways.


Value to Colour Codes
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In the first, click over the writable field and enter the required resistor value. You can only key in a maximum of 4 digits. For large values use the suffices k (multiply by 1000) and M (multiply by 1000000) e.g. for 1500000, type in 1.5M. When you press <Return>, Resistor will display the correct colour bands for the value you have specified. Note, though, that the resistor colour code only allows certain values to be represented; Resistor will have "rounded down" your value to the nearest value that it can display. Values below 10 are not allowed.
 
Colour Codes to Values
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The second way is to drag a colour from the colour chart and release it over one of the bands on the resistor body. Resistor will display in the writable field the value represented by the coloured bands. Grey and White are not allowed in the third band position because they represent too large a value for Resistor to handle.
 
For those of you who are interested, the colour code works as follows:

Black=0 Brown=1 Red=2 Orange=3 Yellow=4
Green=5 Blue=6 Purple=7 Grey=8 White=9

The first two bands (starting from the end of the resistor) represent a decimal number, and the third band represents the number of noughts to add. So, for instance, Yellow:Purple:Orange represents 47000, or 47k. The colour code does allow values below 10 to be represented, but unfortunately it requires a number of colours which are difficult to produce using the usual Archimedes modes.



 RISC User 1993

