On 12/19/2005 at 1:02 PM Roy J. Tellason wrote: >Costs more. Probably the reason, though you can sometimes find IC's that had color bands on the BOTTOM. All I'm talking about is paint, not epoxy or plastic.I'd have to go look at my parts bins to discover who it was, but heck, resistors are cheap; some diodes are color-coded. Cheers, Chuck