MOTM

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".
		.

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".
> .
>
>>

On Mon, 1 Nov 1999, Paul Schreiber wrote:

> 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.

  Yes and no.  The military uses incredible quantities of DIP-packaged
stuff, and changing the standards that form their vendor design
requirements is *very* tough to do.  So, DIPs will be around for quite a
while yet.

  --Scott R.

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