[sdiy] Best place to get 3080s?

[harrybissell]

Tom Arnold wrote:

> In other interesting news, New Japan Radio still supports the process under
> which LM3080's were last made by National, so once there is a real market
> for 3080's ( after existing stocks are depleted a bit more ) I rather expect
> we'll see an NJR3080.  On the other hand, I'm only using 3080's now when I'm
> building a board that requires one.  For new stuff I am laying out I'm
> actually trying to go all discreet where possible.  4 transistors = 1 3080
> in some cases :-)  I think there was a thread a while back about building a
> discrete OTA, if not then I saw it in one of the many books I've gotten
> recently ( I thought it was Walt Jungs latest, but its not ).

Making your own OTA is not trivial. You could make a VCA with an
opamp and three transistors... (two of which should be well matched.

A decent OTA would require many matched pairs... not easy to do
in discrete.

Otoh, maybe I should but transistor pairs from you if you have that
many, that well matched. one thing you can say for the IC process...
the transistors may all ~suck~ but at least they suck in very very
similar ways on the same silicon...

H^) harry