Comment Re:What are all these strange symbols about? (Score 1) 599
As soon as I finished engineering school, this ceased to be useful.
When I designed ICs at IBM, I could make any resistor value I wanted. Now that I'm involved with PCB design, all surface mount resistors are black (except 0 Ohm, which tend to be blue). Figuring out their value may require a microscope and a datasheet.