TI To Buy National?!?

Yeah, me too. M&A is running rampant, right now, and has been for almost 3/4ths of a year. No increases in consumer purchases, so no need to hire more. Convincingly good "better mousetrap" ideas are in short supply, so capital continues to look. Money accumulates, looking a place to put it. Buying known assets with track records is one way to go.

This is a very good time to have a really solid idea that can be sufficiently communicated to capital. They are looking for anything better than a mattress to stuff, right now. But they are also going to be tighter than a clam and harder than ever to convince, too. But it is still a good time. They _want_ to be convinced. Big time.

Jon

Just came here to post this, you beat me to it.

"I am excited to let you know that TI has signed a definitive agreement to purchase National Semiconductor, uniting two industry leaders that have a common commitment to solving your analog needs. I want to reinforce TI's commitment to you, our customer, as we merge our two companies."

Maybe it'll be good for the custom business ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

      Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Maybe, Natsemi has many IC's with high voltage analog sections. I used to poke the local TI FAE with, 'Oh, National has that.... and its good to 40V, does TI have anything similar?' This was when they (TI) were fording into their Digital PWM power stuff.

But maybe TI wants the RF isolator stuff, that's neat isolation. Imagine a Full bridge driver, 4 isolated drivers, Fast, one Chip.

Cheers

hey

Sigh, I liked Burr-Brown.... There's still AD and LT.

At the last trade show Fluke, Keithly and Tek had products in the same booth.

I meet the founder of SRS though! That's still a good company.

George H.

Even though Burr Brown was bought, they still make all their own family of dies, and use their QA program.

r they

y

Oh, I still like their stuff!

George H.

National sucks anyways...

Don't know about the rest of you guys, but somehow it makes me sad to see one of my favourite companies being gobbled up by another. My first two databooks were the RCA transistor and receiving tube manuals back in 1968 and I learned a lot from them, although I had no hope of getting any of their products back then. Then RCA was taken over by Harris. Years later, I acquired a whole set of National databooks - not an easy task from where I live - and have been using their stuff a lot. And now this. A case with a different twist was about AMD and NVidia. I liked the symbiosis between these two and most of the computer hardware I supplied or recommended to my clients were based on AMD CPUs and NVidia-chipset motherboards. Then AMD went and bought NVidia's arch rival.

I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of big corporate business and I'm probably being inappropriately sentimental, but that's the way I feel.

I still have my National Semiconductor Linear Applications and Linear Integrated Circuit books from 1972 - they were my introduction to annalogue design. The glue they used to hold the pages together is failing now but a lot of the content is still relevant.

I'm sorry to see National go but at least TI has a reasonable track record of not just screwing up its acquisitions.

Michael Kellett

Somewhere around the late 70's, there was a rumor going around in Fairchild that Honeywell was going to acquire it; the new name to be "Fairwell HoneyChild".

Not in my opinion. They won't sell you parts to repair their equipment unless you're the original owner. And believe me they check!

Oh, that's too bad. What equipment? Is it some hard to get part? I like that they include schematics of their circuits.

They've come out with a 'clone' of my favorite Lock-in. The PAR/EG%G

124A.

George H.

One was a PAL on the CPU board of an SR760 spectrum analyzer, the other was a transformer for a DG535 that had a shorted primary. After that I gave up.

On some of their older stuff, you can still find schematics. You may have trouble with anything newer than 10 or 15 years old, though.

Oh yeah, and their SR510/530 lock in amps - they won't even sell you the FETs for the front end anymore (which always get blown), but the LSK389 recommended by Winfield Hill works very nicely.

Tek, or at least their parent, acquired Fluke. The Tek ads that tout their "new" benchtop DVMs are funny, since they are just Flukes.

I know Mel Brown, the founder of Berkeley Nucleonics. He had lunch with the SRS guy one day, and that guy (name?) said "I'm going to start a company and steal your digital delay generator business", and he did. SRS specializes in finding "classical" cash-cows and making competitive products, which is sort of why their product line is all over the place. It's probably a fun place to work.

I have a copy of the original DG535 schematics, hand drawn with squiggly comment notes. Interesting.

John

Berkeley Nucleonics ?. I have a dual 7010 digital delay generator. One channel wasn't working and sent a email, as suggested on their website, for a manual copy and they didn't even have the courtesy to reply. Eventually found one at Manuals Plus, who were helpfull, not expensive and the manual arrived in the uk in about a week.

Not particularly impressed, but increasingly common these days...

Regards,

Chris

I sometimes get to use an old SR760. It takes single sided 3.5" floppies. (There's only one left in it and I've never dared try it.) Sometimes booting up it misses things.

I've got the owner/founders buisness card at work. (Sorry I can't remember his name.) Why won't they help support their old equipment? Do they give a reason?

Even if you're a 'real' customer and buy it from them? I can understand not handing out schematics to everyone.

Geesh, I've really poked up a hornet's nest here. If they are running out of the 'special' fets and are hoarding....can you blame them?* Have you told them about the LSK389 replacements? Maybe that's worth a PAL and transformer for free?

George H.

*There's always some single source 'thing' that you might run out of, at some point you order a 'lifetime supply'... It's hard to know what the lifetime is going to be.

r they

Yeah Fluke, Keithly and TEK are all owned by one company, The 'sales' guy at the booth, was very positive. "No, none of their products overlap...."

I like that SRS has a design engineer at the booth. (I can have an intelligent conversation anyway.) This was the first show that I meet the owner/ founder...

Highland Tech should come the the March APS trade show. It'll be on the west coast in two years. (I think next year is Boston.)

I'm at home with a 'stomach bug' (enough said.) or I'd give you his name. If I ever wanted to live in Sundale, CA. I'd apply for a job at SRS.

He's going to send us one of their Rb frequency standards, We want to cut it open and put it next to our optical pumping apparatus....

George H.

I do have the schematic of an Efratom rubidium, and several of the SRS boxes, including the new 2 GHz clock generator. Interesting stuff. You don't get to see schematics that much any more.

John