Good read indeed. Brings back memories of the 1000's of Japanese made IC's I've seen in my life. Nec (uPD...), Toshiba (TC...), Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Fujitsu, S

Good read indeed. Brings back memories of the 1000's of Japanese made IC's I've seen in my life. Nec (uPD...), Toshiba (TC...), Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Sony custom IC's, Yamaha sound & video chips, OKI, Ricoh, Sharp & others. Come to think of it, most simpler IC's (voltage regulators, 74LS logic, opamps etc) back in the day was US (TI) or even EU made (Philips, ST). Especially Nec had extensive databooks (late 70s/early 80s) with everything from CPUs (including V20, V30, or 2nd source like Z80), various types of memory, peripherals like LCD controllers, that famous 765 floppy controller, 4-bit microcontrollers, early DSPs (7720 family), etc, etc. If you're into this stuff: https://Bitsavers.org https://Bitsavers.org has a nice archive of databooks like these.