Counterfeit Hitachi chips - is this really possible?

The following is the text of a fault report I have just typed up for a batch of H8/323 chips that have come in but don't work at all:

What amazes me is that it would be worth somebody's while to manufacture bogus devices. This was a 3000 piece batch. This is quite an unusual part, discontinued around 2001 by Hitachi and circulating fairly freely on the "we can get you discontinued parts" second tier distributor circuit in the USA and elsewhere.

Many years ago I did some ASIC design and one could get those kinds of quantities made, just about, but this kind of thing suggests a well geared up operation (I don't know the source but most likely in the Far East) which tries to make a fast buck, then fold up (because the con will be immediately discovered) and start under another name.

A few possibilities:

Some OEM asked Hitachi to make a bunch of these chips, but with an altered pinout, in order to get better grounding or whatnot. or it would save them 5 cents per PC board if the data lines didnt have to cross over.

They were rejects from final testing at Hitachi. They went into the metal recycling barrel, but somebody rescued them and ran them thru the silk-screen machine at night.

Many years ago there was a place in Lynn, Mass called "Poly Paks" that would sell you a polyethylene bag of IC's at $1 for 8 IC's. This was when a 7404 cost $3. What they mentioned only in the very fine print was that these chips were all rejects from some production line. For example their bag of LED's would all be off-center, dim, or have bubbles in the epoxy. Maybe your IC's came from their oriental stepchild.

Plenty of counterfeit chips on the world market for the unwary!!!

Racist! And 'yes' it IS possible. "We always learn." a Hassidic proverb. Years ago, I work in aerospace electronics and the password for components is "MILSPEC" with the manufacturers and parts in small approved list, with prices accordingly higher, with papers signed certifying the "one and only truth" on delivery. So a shippment of few thousand components arrives and they fail misserable on incoming tests. Strange as we use this factory for years and did not have problems before. So we cut one component and we find that there is NO silicon chip inside?! Telex, no fax yet, we get permission to cut few more, S.O.S. (Same Old Shit) no silicon chips in any of them. Few days later express airmail delivery of our order arrived with a prayer to keep it reasonable quiet. So no name of respectable "Yankee" manufacturer.

Have fun.

Stanislaw.

SNIP

I apologise for saying 'china' . One can find crooks anywhere in the world. It was mentioned by the OP though... My particular knowledge of a similar thing came from a ( apparently) reputable USA supplier of obsolete HC11 parts.... I hope that redresses the balance.

"Peter"

Counterfeit semis are created by altering the labelling on some other semi in a similar package.

This allows old, unsellable, reject or low cost parts to be traded as whatever the market needs now.

See this URL for a few examples of the "craft" :

....... Phil

This is unlikely, as a) Hitachi would not have marked them with the normal P/N or b) they would have been the same package as the normal parts, not approx 0.5mm bigger.

This is such a specialised chip that I think this counterfeit operation was done to fulfill this particular requirement, of only a few thousand chips at USD 7 each.

you posted a blank response :)

"Peter"

..... Phil

Empty inside like the bogus chips.