[metaphor]

I understood that joke to mean, "Maxim components are so expensive that the grey market is about the only place the layman can afford them in more than 1-off prototype quantities."

At least that was my experience 8 or so years ago when I made the mistake of purchasing a lot of 100 MAX7219 off eBay for $100 shipped from China...$1/ea was such a tempting deal to a younger, more naive self when these chips were selling for upwards of $7/ea from ECIA-authorized distributors at the time.

Never fell for that trap again.

[mindslight]

No... there was a time when Maxim parts weren't really available through the major distributors. They had one of the most generous sample programs, but apart from that they seemingly wanted to draw you into some heavyweight direct sales process based around millions of parts per year. As the things I was designing were mostly aiming for quantities in the thousands, it made me not even bother considering their parts.

[Gibbon1]

I'm wondering when that was. I remember basically always being able to get parts through normal distribution.

Motorola microcontrollers on the other hand.

[mindslight]

Around 10-15 years ago. Perhaps our different experiences were due to types of parts we wanted. Eventually I just avoided looking anywhere besides Digikey because the others' parametric searches were so terrible.

(Of course these days Digikey hassles customers by pointlessly firewalling arbitrary netblocks, so maybe the convenience tides are changing)

[Gibbon1]

Makes sense, 10-15 years ago I was on walk about.

Digikey got it's opening when the mainline distributors decided that didn't want to deal with piddly little orders and imposed $250 minimums. Digikey swiped a bunch of their customers.

Now days ordering off Digikey is easy. But the cost of shipping is murder unless you want to wait a week plus for ground. Same time if you know what you want places like Allied will ship small orders for not much. And Jameco Electronics if they have it you can will call from their warehouse in Belmont.

[pravda]

>I made the mistake of purchasing a lot of 100 MAX7219 off eBay

Why was it a mistake? I've used the 'fake' ones. Did not have any problem with them.

[metaphor]

The fundamental problem with counterfeits is that they aren't held to any published spec, so comparing your experience to mine isn't really meaningful...other than being not genuine, you can't generalize anything about counterfeits.

It was so long ago, I had to dig up notes.

On the performance side, the counterfeits I received couldn't be clocked anywhere near the 10 MHz limit specified by a genuine MAX7219; one package pin that should be tied to GND was floating internally (contributing to poor thermal performance); but the real showstopper was that intensity control didn't work for shit.

My records reflect nigelectronics on eBay as the counterfeit seller. This is the address I was instructed to return the counterfeits to when I called them out on it for a refund (I eventually got the refund, but threw these counterfeits in the trash where they belong):

  Cheng Kwok Hang
  15F, BLK 1, Aldrich Garden, 2 Oi Lai Street, Shau Kei Wan, Hong Kong

On the business side, I effectively wasted 10 days lead time in a tight pipeline just waiting for this garbage to arrive + more time/frustration isolating why the chips were failing initial tests; swallowed ~$700 out of pocket + expedited shipping for a single BOM line item to purchase genuine replacements from an authorized distributor; and looked like a complete hobbyist amateur to a collaborator in NYC (who was working on the mechanical side) as I had to explain why my stupid decisions meant he'll have to wait another 2 weeks before receiving the pre-production prototypes I had promised (which meant his clients ultimately had to bear that burden). Then there was all the manual rework which I didn't even keep track of.

This was my first semi-pro side gig out of college, and juggling all the unexpected curve balls with a fulltime day job was quite stressful.