[sdiy] 3080 discrete clones

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

Old thread, but:

On Sun, 14 May 2017, Michael Zacherl wrote:
> >>>>>> On Oct 2, 2014, at 12:16 AM, "Tom Farrand" <mbedtom at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Maybe someone found out about Rochester Electronics.  They own the
> >>>>>> masks and have the technology to make as many as you'd like to buy.  I
> >>>>>> think they have about 11,000 CA3080AE devices in stock (8-pin plastic

...is it really true, or was it true in 2014, that Rochester "have the
technology" to make more?  I thought Rochester's whole thing was that they
hang onto stock after the original manufacturer stops, and that (per Don
Tillman's exchange with Intersil support in 2005,
http://www.till.com/blog/archives/2005/06/last_of_the_ota.html ) the fab
for all "CA" chips was scrapped and nobody can make them anymore short of
building a new fab with decades-old techology.  The masks are hardly the
point - you can't just hand those masks to a modern fab, say "run off some
more of these, please!" and get a chip that will work like the old ones
did.  But if Rochester does have manufacturing capability for these old
chips after all, it'd be a big deal because it would mean they could also
make more of several other designs we think of as long-lost.

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/