Low MOSFET IDSS current

>>*cough* *splutter* You had to say that when I had a mouth full of coffee. 

>Unlikely. This time of day, it would be gin and tonic.

Tea, actually. The G&T was on the table. ;)

My current fave comes from your fair city: Junipero.  

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

pcdhobbs@gmail.com wrote:

>>> Buy from authorized distributors. Real 74HC74s are so cheap, there's 
>>> no reason to buy from counterfeiters. Or to do receiving testing.    
>>> Of course, we only buy from authorized distributors. No ebay or
>>> surplus  houses. 

> *cough* *splutter* You had to say that when I had a mouth full of coffee. 
 
> An *authorized distributor* sent you 16-pin DIPs marked '74HC7474'?
 
> Do tell. 

This was before your time. Things were a bit looser then.

I just used it as an example of how mistakes can happen. Certainly things 
have improved since then.

I hope so. But I'd like proof of what is going in the product.
 
> Cheers
 
> Phil Hobbs
 

John Larkin <jjlarkin@highland_snip_technology.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 00:37:35 GMT, Steve Wilson <no@spam.com> wrote:

>>It seems you are taking a lot for granted. I'm not so trusting.
 
> If you divert your energy into sidetracks like this, you won't
> survive. Put your energy into designing and selling and supporting
> products. In the very rare case that you have a part problem, fix it.

I am planning on fixing it before there is a problem.

> We trust a bunch of suppliers to do things right. *They* test every
> part.

How? You are telling me they take each part out of the reel and test it? To 
what tolerance? And then they put each part back? And put the top tape back 
on?

Maybe the manufacturers do that before they put the part in the reel. But 
they don't give you any information on the distribution. They don't tell 
you what their test limits are.
 
> Really, we are professionals, building and shipping in volume. Our
> field reliability is superb. We get awards. I don't think you have
> standing to lecture us on this.

You are a very small company and have got away with things like this since 
the beginning. Very few large companies could afford to operate this way.

I have grown companies from nothing to multimillion dollar business twice. 
I am planning on doing it again.

But setting up a business takes a lot of planning. I'm hoping to prevent a 
lot of mistakes I made before. Incoming inspection was a big one. I don't 
think it would take as much as you seem to believe to do a proper job.
 
And that's only one of dozens of details I need to take care of. 

  
>> An *authorized distributor* sent you 16-pin DIPs marked '74HC7474'? 
  
>> Do tell. 

>This was before your time. Things were a bit looser then. 

I've been in the biz longer than HCMOS has been around. Thanks for playing though. 

>I just used it as an example of how mistakes can happen. Certainly things 
>have improved since then. 

Well, real examples are much more valuable than fabricated ones. Just saying. 

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

>I have grown companies from nothing to multimillion dollar business twice. 
>I am planning on doing it again.

Good for you--I hope to do the same. Which ones were yours?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

pcdhobbs@gmail.com wrote:

>>> An *authorized distributor* sent you 16-pin DIPs marked '74HC7474'? 
>>>   Do tell. 

>>This was before your time. Things were a bit looser then. 
 
> I've been in the biz longer than HCMOS has been around. Thanks for
> playing though. 

Yes, but that was at IBM. I also started long before HCMOS. But I was 
probably involved in incoming inspection much more than you. Every part in my 
designs had to have a written test specification. Often, I had to modify the 
spec written by someone else, then get it approved. Any new parts were a real 
pain to deal with.
 
> Cheers
> 
> Phil Hobbs
> 

pcdhobbs@gmail.com wrote:

>>I have grown companies from nothing to multimillion dollar business twice. 
>>I am planning on doing it again.
 
> Good for you--I hope to do the same. Which ones were yours?

Production testing for hard disk drives.

The new one will still be in instrumentation, but a different area.
 
> Cheers
 
> Phil Hobbs

>>>> An *authorized distributor* sent you 16-pin DIPs marked '74HC7474'? 
>>>>   Do tell. 

>>>This was before your time. Things were a bit looser then. 
  
>> I've been in the biz longer than HCMOS has been around. Thanks for 
>> playing though. 

>Yes, but that was at IBM.

Nope, long before that, and the whole issue is irrelevant to your *ahem* misremembering the 74HC7474 thing and then doubling down when challenged. 

Steve, if you have anything specific to back up your contentions about the alleged misbehaviour of top-shelf distributors, I'd genuinely be glad to hear about it, because I depend on them. If not, you really should just fold your tent on this one. 

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

>> Good for you--I hope to do the same. Which ones were yours? 

>Production testing for hard disk drives. 

Hmm. http://productiontestingforharddiskdrives.com comes up with "couldn't resolve host name". Did your company have a different name?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

On Saturday, December 16, 2017 at 12:10:57 PM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 00:37:35 GMT, Steve Wilson <no@spam.com> wrote:
> 
> >John Larkin <jjlarkin@highland_snip_technology.com> wrote:
> >
> >>>I was hoping some mfg guys would chime in and tell us their horror
> >>>stories. 
> > 
> >> Buy from authorized distributors. Real 74HC74s are so cheap, there's
> >> no reason to buy from counterfeiters. Or to do receiving testing.
> > 
> >Of course, we only buy from authorized distributors. No ebay or surplus 
> >houses.
> >
> >If you don't do incoming inspection, how do you know they haven't sent you 
> >parts that failed AQL at some other company?
> 
> No serious distributor would do that. They would lose their principals
> ASAP.
> 
> And no parts would fail someone's incoming inspection without the
> manufacturer knowing about it.
> 
> >
> >If you don't do AQL, how do you know the distribution of the parts?
> >
> >It seems you are taking a lot for granted. I'm not so trusting.
> 
> If you divert your energy into sidetracks like this, you won't
> survive. Put your energy into designing and selling and supporting
> products. In the very rare case that you have a part problem, fix it.
> 
> If you don't ship, you will never have quality problems.

Not strictly true - even proof of principle prototypes can fail if a single part is out of spec.

Back in 1977 our prototype ultra-sound scanner stopped working about half an hour after we closed the door of the rack, which we traced down to a Texas Instruments TTL shift register which stopped working when the ambient got over 40 Celcius. It took us an hour or so to find the duff part, at the test site, so we got home late that evening.

> >Especially when I think it might be able to test a whole reel, perhaps in 
> >under ten minutes including setup.
> >
> >I've been in reasonable volume production before. You have no time when it 
> >hits to do a proper job, and you spend a great deal of time recovering 
> >from mistakes and bad or wrong parts.
> 
> We check one or two parts on each received reel to see if they are the
> right value. We have a machine-vision thing that inspects built boards
> for soldering, part number, orientation, all that. After all, you
> could pick a part from a reel and put it in the wrong place, or
> backwards, or something.

One of the harder to find faults on a Cambridge Instruments electron beam tester back in 1985 turned out to be a resistor lead that had be soldered into a via on a signal line rather than to Vcc. The signal line was mostly at Vcc, so the fault didn't happen often. I was the guy that actually found it, but the narrowing down process had taken a couple of people a couple of days.
 
> Our auto P+P does inspection during placement.
>
> >The time to solve these problems is right at the beginning.
> >
> >You have excellent stock inventory programs. These are invaluable, and must 
> >have taken time to write and debug. You know where you get the parts, how 
> >much they cost, and how many you have used.
> >
> >But you have no idea if the parts actually meet spec, or what you are 
> >putting in your product.
> 
> We inspect and test every production unit extensively. Bad parts will
> show up there, and occasionally they do.
> 
> We trust a bunch of suppliers to do things right. *They* test every
> part.
> 
> Really, we are professionals, building and shipping in volume. Our
> field reliability is superb. We get awards. I don't think you have
> standing to lecture us on this.

You ship in volume, but fairly small volumes. Professional merely means that you get paid for what you ship. Steve Wilson isn't as enthusiastically into self-publicity as you are, so he may have rather more standing than you think.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney