It's getting to be conventional wisdom among EEs that one should avoid designing Maxim parts into products. It doesn't help that pinouts are deliberately made non-standard.
I've been personally burned four or five times. At this instant, we can't ship over a million dollars worth of product because Maxim has slipped their promised delivery date on MAX5205's. Do you know where I can score a couple of hundred?
I've been having friends and family request samples, which are available. Every 8 dacs we can scrounge, we can ship a $54,000 laser modulator.
I'm curious which parts you think have deliberate non-standard pinouts. I can tell you in the decade I worked there, this was never an issue. Pinouts are carefully chosen to minimize noise, ease PCB layout, etc. To keep costs down, Maxim doesn't make a die per each package type (in general), so pinouts are designed to work across many package types. [Back lap specs change from package to package, so often wafers get allocated to one particular package at the expense of another, which in turn causes shortages in a particular package type.]
At no company did I ever deliberately make pinouts to be non-standard. If anything, if a part exists already with defined pinouts, you make it a point to use THOSE pinouts in order to steal the sockets with your hopefully superior product.
For one chip I did at a company I better not mention, a customer leaked us a datasheet of a competitors part. We actually changed our part to match their pinouts since our part was still in design. They had an interesting feature that I added as well. As luck would have it, our part came out before their part, but with the competitors pinouts and features. While we were doing high fives, I suspect somebody at the competition was pounding their fist on the conference table.
WSM AM Radio 650 KHZ in Nashville has several slots during the week were they only play early country and western music. You can listen online at
formatting link
You can also hear the "Grand Ole Opry" live and in stereo on Friday and Saturday evenings. I have it on almost around the clock. You can listen for four hours before you are dropped, but all you have to do is click on the "Click here to keep listening to WSM" button to start the stream again.
--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
I was a horrible disc jockey on a campus station for a few weeks during my college days. Did you ever think about the challenge of ending your show at the appropriate time?
After that experience I always though that his closing:
"This is Paul Harvey ................................................ .......................................... Good Day!"
was an amateur technique that evolved into a style.
Try keeping a TV station on schedule from sign on to sign off, including a live newscast where the "Talent" didn't wand to shut up at the end of their 30 minutes.
--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
I DJ'd for our college station (the only student station network affiliated, at the time) for a summer in the early '70s. I didn't have so much trouble ending on time for the network news, and such. My problem was getting all the work done, when it needed doing; logs, transmitter readings, station breaks...
Look at the 5-year chart and compare with LLTC and ATML.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
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"it\'s the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Yes, Maxim Dallas Direct (MDD) is definitely also for large volume production needs. Of course there will be times when our standard lead time is too long for customer requirements, and when that happens, let us know. Our people are trained to do everything possible to always meet customers' lead time requirements. Too often the customer just hears the lead time, says thank you, and hangs up. If we know you need parts sooner we will look at upgrades, alternatives, world wide inventory, etc. What I find most useful is when customers are able to provide their drop dead quantity and their run rate. If a customer calls in for 10k, the lead time may be 8 weeks, but if they are only using 1k/week, we can often find ways to split their order into 1k shipments and keep their production line running. In addition, customers are able to schedule orders out as far as a year. This allows them to take advantage of volume prices and helps eliminate delivery issues.
Thank you for your suggestion regarding tracking lost business due to lead time.
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Call me cynical (it would be much nicer than some things I've been called), but I see Rebecca as 'damage control'.
As I noted much earlier in this thread, I have had assurances in the past that all was changed and Maxim really really _really_wanted to cater to the little project as well as the big one, but then when push came to shove, failed utterly and reverted to type. Once they were designed in and a board fabricated, I encountered an attitude that can only be characterised as arrogant; viz - 'there is no direct substitute for that part and now you'll just have to either order a huge quantity or wait until we happen to get such an order for it'.
The last time that happened I made a board with the same footprint as the part with a competitor's part on it.
The exhortations I hear are rather like the boy who cried Wolf, but I've now heard it too many times to believe it.
I'll believe the reform when I _see_ it. Until then, Maxim is a proscribed vendor for my products. That's a shame as they make some really good stuff.
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