RFQ

Jim:

It depends on how many are out there and who has them.

We used to use an old Ferranti timer IC: ZN1034E that was then manufactured by Plessey and then GEC-Plessey-Siemens until a few years ago.

Once production stopped, we found stock in many places until finally we were down to a few suppliers and lots of would-be sellers. We did a one-time purchase at a reasonable price (they were in Finland) and still have a few remaining for repairs etc. We recently noticed that someone is supposed to have 21k stock of these chips, but I think it is vapour.

Your best bet is always to try and find a stockist and not go through the regular 'buy-in and sell-out' people who come up on Google. The smaller guys are pretty good, although they are not so slow that they won't make a killing if they can!

I'd suggest a couple of people, but we are in the UK and our contacts are probably of no use. If you had a part# I could ask our guys to look at it for you if you want.

Regards,

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

I think if you don't know the approximate price you won't have a clue.

Some parts have big quanitities floating around from cancelled orders, are oddball with few alternate applications, and are cheap compared to the original price. Some, especially some microcontroller-type products, may be in short supply, and worth a lot to those who have money invested in software and qualification and don't want to redo their design for the sake of a few thousand dollars worth of parts. Other parts are commodity and will go for around the usual price, unless there is a supply squeeze, in which case they can skyrocket.

I never thought this "target price" was a fair question anyway. Tell me your best selling price and let's see if it's good enough...

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Googling for parts is fraught with hazards, once you get outside the well known suppliers. Something that always pops up is "Hong Kong Inventory", and from the number of responses you get back, sometimes I think the entire Shenzen district is infested with backyard chip brokers. It works like this : you submit an RFQ for, say a few hundred ABC1234 chips and give a target price (well below what you would pay a reputable disty like Newark or Digikey). Within hours, half of China was filled your mailbox with offerings, often with a 10:1 price ratio between top and bottom. You choose one then enter into negotiation. After this, they issue a proforma invoice which, 75% of the time, has a price HIGHER than what they quoted. When you question this, the reply is "demand has increased", even though you are the one who has generated the demand. They dont do credit cards, need bank drafts, inflate the shipping and even then, sometimes you get a helluva bargain. Other times you get little bits of plastic that look like chips but do nothing at all (I got caught out with a bunch of dummy AL3201s this way). There be dragons...... M