Re: Pinball and counterfeit electronic components....


"ArcadeForever" <Arcadeforever@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:8edc7626-2c98-4b4b-8d32-df3de1683f15@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Feb 20, 10:20 pm, "GPE" <GPE_NoS...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I just read an article on replacement IC's and transistors. Many of the
formerly common IC's and transistors made in the 80's and 90's have been
phased out during the past ten years. These formerly very common IC's
include CPU's (such as 6800's and 6502's), peripheral IC's (such as 6821's
and 6532's) and a myriad of transistor types are now sought after
by -thousands- of people in the repair field. This demand has been noticed
by the Chinese who are now heavily producing counterfeit components to sell
to us 'low end' repair people...

According to the article, it is now estimated that 8% percent of the parts
out there are now counterfeits and almost exclusively from China.

It wouldn't be so bad if these parts actually worked... but, in most
instances, the parts are duds and have been 'black painted' and remarked to
whatever part number the customer asks for. In many instances -- there
isn't even a die inside the IC!

So, unfortunately, buyer beware when making IC and transistor purchases...

-- Ed

Wow, thats pretty sad, do they forge the names of the real
manufacturers on the IC too?

Ive never run across any yet thankfully and I buy a lot from ebay, I
guess I better test everything I get..

thanks for the heads up.

AF

Yep -- forged vendor names, forged vendor logo's, etc.
I have some very pretty Motorola MJ10000's which were sent to me from an Aussie distributor. MJ10000's are the motor control transistors for Hyperball.
These have the Motorola batwing logo, Motorola part number "MJ10000", made in Mexico (of course, all these counterfeits seem to be made in Mexico) and a date code of 0216 (16th week of 2002).
Problem is -- Motorola ceased existing in 1999 when it became On-Semi. On-Semi's website said all parts would be marked with ON logo by 29th week of 2000.

Same distributor sold me a ton of 2N3584's...which turned out to be all counterfeits as well.
After much bitching, the distributor refunded my $$$.
I now only buy through proper channels and in several cases - factory direct.

There's a website with a dedicated page to fake Rockwell IC's -- 6500 series. Seems a guy bought some 6500 series IC's from a well known arcade parts seller (many of you here have heard of them but I won't go there as I do not want to start a flame war... and the seller withdrew the parts anyways). None of the parts worked for the creator of the website. Upon closer inspection - he noticed all parts were marked identically with Rockwell name and logo along with Rockwell part number and date code. All parts had same date code. But, all parts had slight differences in plastic body especially in pin 1 identification notch - not likely if all came from same factory at same time.
He then noticed the very clean looking parts had actually been painted with a flat black paint and then restamped.

.... rather sad.
-- Ed


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