Part obselence

They might be talking about 'specials' that don't often fail anyway. I have never had any problem obtaining 'standard' parts. Many transistors and diodes and ICs that first appeared thirty or more years ago, and achieved industry-wide recognition for their functionality, cost etc, continue to be manufactured and readily available right up to the present. Whilst some have undergone improvements and minor changes - the 74 series TTL chips being a good example - many devices are still manufactured completely unchanged from their original format (except for having all of the lead wrung out of them, of course ... :-\ )

On the other hand, custom ICs - specials - do tend to have a short lifetime, often allied to the functionality lifetime of the product they were designed for. When one of these occasionally does fail, they can be very difficult to obtain even when the equipment is still relatively new, and once it has been superceded by the next model, such spares for the previous model will indeed be at least obsolescent, and very possibly, obsolete. How does the repair industry deal with this ? We smile sweetly at the customer, and tell them that their beloved item of equipment has just become a doorstop, because parts are no longer available. 50% of them will sigh, shake their heads sadly, and walk away into the sunset, carrying their poor dead comrade under their arm.

The other 50% will explode at the news and rant and rave as though it's our fault. I usually point these people in the direction of the equipment manufacturer's customer liason department, and shoo them off ...

Arfa

stated

There is a thriving market in guaranteed non-workers on e-bay, for spare parts.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Today consumer electronics are being designed with a MTBF of just 3 years.

I have some variable transistor power supplies from the 60's which still work fine. But then again, they were over designed ;-)

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You do have a good way with words!!!!

On 5/30/2009 7:10 AM alchazz spake thus:

You're confusing the issue here: early obsolescence != short MTBF.

Cannibalism. That's one of the uses of a well stocked junk pile.

eBay. Amazing what you can find on eBay.

Substitution. If you have the specs on the part, one can usually find something similar. At best, an equivalent or a different package. At worst, some redesign and creativity.

Parts Scalpers. There are vendors that seem to be able to get anything. However, you won't like the price. I recently paid $200 for a tube of 14 IC's, that were originally worth 25 cents each. I only needed one. Grrrr... However, it revived a $5,000 piece of test equipment so I guess I can't complain.

Unfortunately, some parts just can't be found. Custom ASIC's, unreadable PLA's, and such are difficult to find. It's common for a manufacturer to purchase the entire production run of some chip. When the product doesn't sell, the chip vendor discontinues production of the custom part, resulting in it never even hitting the distributors.

To make matters worse, we now have counterfeit products and parts. In most cases, they have a very short life, do not meet specs, have bogus firmware, bad soldering, bad construction, are generally inferior, but can be found really cheap. I've been fairly lucky but still managed to end up with several Cisco boards that were suppose to be pull-outs, but really were counterfeits.

The surest sign of success is pollution. I guess electronics repair is finally deemed successful.

You do have a good way with words!!!!

Thanks ! I try my best ... d;~}

Arfa

Please provide some source to justify this statement. Are you just speculating, are you basing this on some limited information that you have seen about some particular parts, or do you have some industry wide data to support this nonsensical assumption?

Leonard

When you have decent education, basic intelligence, or just a little common sense, you can get by....especially on Usenet. :)

Leonard