I was planning on using a UA741CP (From TI) as a differential amplifier(to get a current value from a shunt resistor and then administer that value to the ADC of an MCU to avoid noise), however, I noticed that no matter what I did, the output voltage never seemed to go below 1.78 V (when VCC- is grounded) . I do realize that this op-amp was not specifically designed to be used as a differential amplifier, however, the manufacturer did state in the datasheet that the device was a general purpose op-amp and none of the specs mentioned addressed this characteristic. In addition, -correct me if I'm wrong- I assumed that any op-amp would be suitable as a differential amplifier as long as you bias it properly ( 1K resistors on each branch would give an output of Vin1-Vin2, unity differential gain).