Old ICs are getting impossible to find now
Posted: 13 Sep 2023 11:34
Of course it's of no great suprise really. Thought the last of my VL1772 stock sold this week. Those were new ics and not sourced from China. However even the china / used market has long since dried up. I use all sorts of parts sourcing companies and they cannot find a source anymore. I did find one company who had the VL1772 but they are £50 a pop now.
I've noticed a lot of stuff I buy like cpus seems to be the "bottom of the barrel" parts now. More and more failures and prices are always going up. It's become a huge issue these days. Same as I mentioned I can't obtain the 30pin simm sockets anymore and other items. Even basic TTL chips seemed to have vanished off the UK market.
Back in 2020 I panic bought as much stuff as I could to keep producing kits and keep stock of parts in my store.But my own stock is running dry now. I've thrown countless hours into sourcing parts but it seems somewhat futile now.
I use a lot of DRAM chips in various RAM upgrades. If that chips vanishes (I've not checked for a few years) then it renders all those kits obsolete. I doubt I'd be able to redesign all those kits again to use a different IC. My PCB days are basically over and I don't really have the motivation to start over again anyway.
While I have purchased a lot of Atari STs over the years. The mostly got used as test machines in the beginning. I sold off the good cases as people know. Later purchases were mostly smashed machine off the internet. I've already stripped the majority of those parts and got them in my store. Though even buying basically scrap machines is getting into £100 type areas now. So it's not really sustainable to keep doing that either.
So I would advise anyone wanting to stock up on anything to do it sooner rather than later. Not all my stock is in my store but there isn't much left of a lot of things now. Or even buy stock from China before it's to late.
I've noticed a lot of stuff I buy like cpus seems to be the "bottom of the barrel" parts now. More and more failures and prices are always going up. It's become a huge issue these days. Same as I mentioned I can't obtain the 30pin simm sockets anymore and other items. Even basic TTL chips seemed to have vanished off the UK market.
Back in 2020 I panic bought as much stuff as I could to keep producing kits and keep stock of parts in my store.But my own stock is running dry now. I've thrown countless hours into sourcing parts but it seems somewhat futile now.
I use a lot of DRAM chips in various RAM upgrades. If that chips vanishes (I've not checked for a few years) then it renders all those kits obsolete. I doubt I'd be able to redesign all those kits again to use a different IC. My PCB days are basically over and I don't really have the motivation to start over again anyway.
While I have purchased a lot of Atari STs over the years. The mostly got used as test machines in the beginning. I sold off the good cases as people know. Later purchases were mostly smashed machine off the internet. I've already stripped the majority of those parts and got them in my store. Though even buying basically scrap machines is getting into £100 type areas now. So it's not really sustainable to keep doing that either.
So I would advise anyone wanting to stock up on anything to do it sooner rather than later. Not all my stock is in my store but there isn't much left of a lot of things now. Or even buy stock from China before it's to late.