Mundane resistors out of stock, what's going on?

Our BOMs use our company 7-digit part number. Our MAX data base lists up to five mfr/mpn's that are qualified for each MAX part. We can change a data base entry without changing the BOM.

I've seen BOM management software that didn't understand this concept.

That's how it's supposed to be and was in both companies I worked at as an employee, except the P/Ns were 8-digit.

It's unbelievable how disorganized some software writers are in their design concepts. A classic example is WordPress which was touted as the ultimate cat's meouw for web site design. I am maintaining a small chunk of our church web site and unfortunately it is in WordPress. All files go into one huge repository unless you layer some extra software over that. It's like having all shop tools in one huge trunk. I call that a chaos. What were they thinking? Or rather, were they thinking?

Same with forums. Hardly any offer proper threading. Usenet always did because the old guys knew how it's done.

They have a finite budget for production line construction and maintenance. My assumption is there's been plenty of spending on production capacity, but it has all been aimed at smartphone and tablet components. You don't see a lot of 0805s or 0603s in an iPhone.

Meanwhile, the automotive sector does use a lot of those components, and their volume assures that they get the lion's share. That leaves the rest of us -- meaning everybody not building either cars or cellphones -- begging for floor sweepings.

Most people, even around here, don't understand just how different electronic devices look today than they did ten years ago. The component manufacturers sure do, though.

-- john, KE5FX

We use a phone number, 123-4567. We have a very well thought out (ie, brutally fought over) document that has the rules for assigning the numbers. It's available.

Some people want full traceability, the ability to know the purchasing history of every part on every single board. We don't do that.

Agent is great.

That backfires though. Most of my stuff is produced for many years or for decades. Clients typically do not change a thing unless absolutely necessary. So all those Panasonic resistors that I had to kick out of the BOMs won't likely ever make it back in even if they become available again.

Sometimes the old devices are way better. The fancy Rio stereo in the living room started falling apart piece by piece, function by function, shortly after its warranty period ended. A month ago I'd had it and sent it to E-waste. Brought my wife's big old early 70's stereo up from the man cave. It still works great, has much better reception, better sound and I began to wonder why we ever bought this highfalutin newfangled stuff.

For downstairs I dusted off the old Drake SSR-1 receiver, hooked up two big Rio speaker we had kept and that works as well, also better than this new stuff.

Now if we want to change a station we have to get off the chair again -> improves fitness -> what a concept ...

rote:

e.

but

That doesn't sound right because the growth in demand is in exactly those a reas you say they are paying attention to. Unless they are actually rampin g down production of the larger parts in a very significant way, the demand should be reducing, not increasing.

ing

But other than the small portion of the market of electric vehicles, there shouldn't be any more increase in demand by automotive than anywhere else, no? I've not heard that autos are growing by leaps and bounds or that they use dramatically more electronics than a few years ago.

onic

ers

Not sure what you mean. Yeah, the creep is to use smaller parts and PWBs w ith smaller features to make mobile products smaller... but otherwise, I be lieve they are not much changed.

Rick C.

Some forums have the approximation to threading of allowing multi-level quoting.

Some forums (e.g. stackexchange, edaboard) actively prevent that. This very effectively limits the postings to "which button do I press to squirdle the wurzel". It eliminates conversations involving to-and-fro of subtle interesting points. That appears to be a conscious business decision.

Another approximation to threading is to receive each message as an email, and to use the mail user agent's threading.

It prevents sub-thread discussions that can be very interesting but where a reader or participant is only interested in two of them and not the other five.

IMO not a smart one.

That's stone age technology.

Just so.

Well, I loathe it, but stackexchange appears to be thriving.

Indeed. But most people regard usenet as bronze age, and bulletin boards/forums as iron age. If it ain't on your phone, it doesn't count :(

Actually, it tried, but it took a long time to get threading right, in the presence of dropped or late articles. There was a document written by Jamie Zawinski around 1997 where he analyzed the problem in detail and set out the best known algorithm (implemented by him and a friend of mine) in Netscape Gold which eventually became Thunderbird.

USENET was more than a decade old when that article was written.

Clifford Heath.

I just stick to Usenet, the rest I leave to the kids.

It sure ain't on my phone, can't because my cell phone is this one:

In our kitchen we have one of these and fully functional:

The crank generator is disconnected, of course.

Stack and Quora are question-answering services. They discourage conversation, because conversation is inane and pollutes an actual answer.

Reddit is the most practical contemporary format, having true threading AND ranking. Its main downside is the same problem with any democracy: the tyranny of the majority prevents real meaningful discussion, except in more narrowly managed subreddits. That said, the community overall tends to be on the smarter, kinder side, and self-correcting towards that state. As compared to, say, any average schmoe on Facebook.

Newsgroups and forums are for chatty cathys that don't want answers, just bickering.

Oh, and you guys...... :->

Tim

Demand for 01005 and smaller parts goes up by 10x due to Apple and Samsung. The resistor manufacturer respond by spending their whole budget scaling up production accordingly.

Then, demand for 0805s and 0603s goes up by 2x due to the automakers. There's not much left in the kitty for expansion of production of those, so the automakers get ALL of it.

They definitely do, even without considering electric powertrains. "Telematics" is the buzzword du jour.

-- john, KE5FX

Very similar to mine.

I can no longer blip my landline's "off hook" switch to pulse-dial numbers. DTMF is required. That's because my phone line is supplied by my ISP.

But in future...

BT (think Ma Bell) is forging ahead with plans to shut its traditional telephone network in Britain, with the intention of shifting all customers over to IP telephony services by 2025.

The closure of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is part of plans by BT toward internet-based voice calls via a fibre network. As such it will be looking to close a chunk of exchanges.

etc

When I discovered the existence of Usenet, some time in the early 80's, the newsreader du jour, 'rn', didn't have threading. Granted, the number of contributors was small and you could easily read *all* of it in little time. Imagine that. It did have kill files though.

Threaded news readers like 'trn' came soon after.

Jeroen Belleman

re a

er five.

When I found electronics stack exchange I thought it would be great. (lots more people.) But the whole structure seems to stifle asking and answering, what for me are the interesting questions.

"What's a good part for this job?"

George H.

Very much so, and that's also true of the other bits, e.g. for computer/software.

The other interesting questions, which rarely appear on stackexchange, "Why is that?" and "Can you justify your assertion?"

C'mon, you are an electronics engineer, you could devise a little box that does the translation pluse -> DTMF.

It is only a matter of time until that happens on this side of the pond. Then one fine day a few of the big computers fail because of a power grid issue or whatever and communications collapse. Not an insurmountable problem for us ham radio guys but for others it will be.

Great buzzword, but what is in a car today that wasn't in a car five years ago when the demand started to rise? XM radio, cruise control, anti-lock brakes, etc., etc. has all been around for at least a decade.

Rick C.