fake chips in the news

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** Go fishing in a sewer -- catch lot of shitty things.

Not news.

..... Phil

Is anyone keeping a master list of the high-volume chips that are unobtainium at this point? Stocks of a number of 8 bit AVRs like the ATTiny85, ATTiny84 are about nil with lead times into 2020.

2022, rather

Fake stuff has been around since humans first started making things.

The punishments seemed a bit excessive hung, drawn and quartered, then burnt alive for one - but I can understand the desire...

I buy obsolete parts from questionable sources when I can't find what I need from legit sellers, but test them carefully before using. I do run into counterfeits periodically and some parts that are counterfeit may escape detection due to not testing to full manufacturers specs - if operationally the same - then for our purposes (repair of amusement machines only) then that is satisfactory. Items that are safety (fuses, MOVs, etc.) I only buy from one of the big three, if humanly possible, and paying the premium.

It's not like you can order 2716s, 2708s, or a lot of other 1960s and early 70s parts from Digikey/Mouser/Newark. The secondary sources - Unicorn, Jameco, etc are (I assume) plagued with counterfeit parts too and are very careful.

John :-#)#

Most STM32s are into 2022 as well.

What's news is the economic impact lately, enough to get the WSJ interested.

They didn't mention the dynamics of previous semi shortage bubbles.

We're getting estimates of 2023 for some display drivers.

I had to respin a design to use an available processor. The processor I had originally planned to use had a 53 week lead time, what was available of those wound up on ebay.

Cheers

Some of the guys on the DIY synthesizer forums are dealing them out in onesies and twosies in plastic baggies like crack cocaine. You got the stuff, bro?

Modular synthesizers are kinda like crack cocaine for some guys, anyway..

Happens every time. Decades ago we got a bunch of crappy regulator chips from somewhere in Eastern Europe.

I recently spec'd a STM32F0 for a new design, we were told (by Arrow) that they will start accepting new orders for them in 2023.

We ended up buying 3 years' worth of a similar part (STM32L432) that was still in stock, and redesigning the board to suit. It was either that or have no product to ship.

We have only been bitten by counterfeit parts once, a PIC18 of all things. They were obviously fake, pins all measured O/C, markings were inked not lasered, and the date code was 8 years old.

Our contract PCB assemblers procure and hold all the parts for us, which has always struck me as a bit risky, for exactly this reason. I never did hear how that one got resolved, but it's never happened since. Hopefully the distributor responsible got fired.

A long time ago I was made redundant from a company for whom I'd designed some stuff which was selling well. Small quantities, high margin.

Then one day I had a call asking if I'd look at a batch of processor boards, none of which worked, all with different symptoms. I agreed a large price, knowing what these sold for.

Turns out it was some grey market static RAMs - the firmware ran from these for speed after loading from UV EPROM. Each board had eight chips, and it seemed the faults were probably peppered around and thus the symptoms different for each board.

So eight 28 pin DIL chips per board, I could replace those in an hour, breathing through a snorkel, chop the pins, extract the pins, clear the hole with a stainless needle and solder in new RAM. Top-notch footballer's wages while it lasted.

So where are people buying these sketchy parts in the first place? During the whole n95 mask panic, I directed people to specifically get in line and purchase from Grainger or a couple other major distributors on the basis that they buy direct and do not have problems with counterfeits sneaking into their supply chain. Sure enough tons of fake 3m masks started to turn up all over the place. Amazon is supposed to be pretty bad with counterfeits and comingled stock issues. For some items, the manufacturer even states do not buy from amazon.

All sorts of cheap Chinese things come with "3M" double-side mounting foam. As if.

Many are being ordered from ebay. Lots of stuff comming from China . Some of it is fine and some of it is junk. A friend ordered some RF transistors from them. The tested ok on a DC transisitor tester. Worked ok at low frequencies, but fell apart much above 10 MHz. They should have worked to atleast 50 MHz. He bought some from a reputable source in the US and the equipment put out full power .

A lot of Chinese stuff is copies of copies of copies. It can lose things along the way.

Ordering off ebay just seems like a deliberate way to shoot yourself in the foot from the start.