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Just don't buy chips on Ebay, Aliexpress, Amazon, etc. or any other online market where the seller is not well known to be reliable, especially costly parts. Ch
by squarefoot 6y ago
Just don't buy chips on Ebay, Aliexpress, Amazon, etc. or any other online market where the seller is not well known to be reliable, especially costly parts. Chinese vendors in these cases almost always sell fakes; but beware also of local sellers who, whether knowingly or not, buy shoddy cheap parts from those vendors in quantities to sell them locally.
Get in production chips from the usual suppliers (Mouser, Farnell, Digikey, etc. - I would recommend tme.eu in the EU; no affiliation, just a happy customer) and for vintage, obsolete or hard to find parts, go to ham fests or if you search online, pay extra attention to the products and the sellers history and feedback: if a cheap part can be easily turned into a more costly one just by relabeling it, then you can be sure it eventually will.
- vanous 6y agoI cannot upvote this enough. And, will add: do the same for components, becase the same repackaging happens there. By the time you find out, it is thousands of already manufactured PCBs later...
- naikrovek 6y agoWhere are you going to find genuine 8086 chips from an official reseller? They aren't made anymore. "Only buy from official resellers" is valid advice for parts that are still made or for parts which are still in stock in large quantities, but your advice helps no one looking for an 8086 or any other vintage silicon.
- squarefoot 6y agoThat's why I mentioned ham conventions, let alone flea markets etc. You would be surprised of how many old perfectly legit NOS parts can be found in those "alternative" places. Of course it's all about luck: that is, being in the right place at the right time. One cannot plan to make N products out of a part that could be found in 10s, 1000s or a million, or not to be found at all.