MOTM

Well, I was a telephony designer in a previous life (central office
analog-to-T1 muxes)
and he is correct. And, since I had CO designs, they needed *written*
letters from each
chip supplier with a 15 YEAR availibility guarantee! I used an Intel
industrial temp 80186
and Intel charged us like $190 instead of $50.

In MOTM, I try as hard as possible to use "off the shelf" parts, but in
electronics,
there are no guarantees anymore! DIP packages are S L O W L Y going away.
DIY will die in 10 years as they all dry up.

Paul S.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tkacs, Ken <Ken.Tkacs@...>
To: 'motm@onelist.com' <motm@onelist.com>
Date: Monday, November 01, 1999 8:08 AM
Subject: RE: [motm] Custom Chips (was:Thinking on Mixer)


>From: "Tkacs, Ken" <Ken.Tkacs@...>
>
>
>In a casual conversation with a friend who is an engineer in the telephony
>community, he told me that he is FORBIDDEN to design anything using a part
>that is not available from at least three sources because of the danger of
a
>component manufacturer deciding to drop a part and suddenly take down an
>entire product line. The only possible exception is microprocessors, which
>end up being a necessary risk. I remember when the CEM/SSM chips came
out...
>I thought they were God's gift to synthesists the minute I read about them.
>Now I look at my ESQ-M and Mono/Poly and wonder when they will become so
>much scrap.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> ....  A really good VCO that
> *does not depend on some critical part that is no longer
>made*.  Yes,
> folks said the same thing when the uA726 went away.  But
>other matched
> pairs existed--not the case for a custom IC.  In addition,
>to offer a
> modular system means to effectively offer a *complete
>solution*, not just
> nifty modules to fill in the gaps between "stuff I already
>have".
> .
>
>>