The curse of fake parts out of China.

[radventure]

Awesome - thanks!!

 

[Hugo Holden]

As a side note I've had better luck sourcing old logic IC's from Europe and HK, they at least turn up in tubes and usually ESD safe bags, but the cost is usually much higher. I tend to avoid Rockwell labels on anything.

The best genuine vintage memory devices you can can buy now are out of Bulgaria and Ukraine, because they are genuine new old stock parts, often mil spec, and not part of some component refurbishment schemes, retrieving parts from old boards, welding new pins on them and selling them off as new, operating out of the far East.

Still, it is trying to "Save the Planet" , but of course the road to Hell is always paved with good intentions.

 

[andy]

I have more confidence in used parts than NOS. It's unlikely that anyone would bother to fake a used part.

 

[Hugo Holden]

I have more confidence in used parts than NOS. It's unlikely that anyone would bother to fake a used part.

Interesting idea, but I would have to disagree on the confidence level.

The problem is with used parts is you have no idea what they have been through in the past and the "all manner of abuses" they have been subjected to; Physical, thermal (when removed from pcb's with gross heating which appears to be the new method for stripping all manner of parts from used pcb's prior to recycling) and electrical trauma, over voltage, reverse polarity, electrostatic discharge, etc etc.

A NOS part (that is if it genuinely is NOS) has not been a victim of the myriad of possible past traumas that a used part might have suffered. This makes the genuine NOS part a much better bet.

Of course you might "get lucky" with a used part, but it is also widely known that CMOS parts, if subjected to electrostatic damage (which is far more likely if they are used, because of the multiple handling steps in their history) can be latent. Then the part fails later. So you are ending up with less reliable parts.

When it comes to UVeproms I have found the better ones are always NOS, typically ex mil spec parts and/or Japanese made parts, and originating out of Europe and sometimes the USA. But some USA shops now are re-selling parts that have been through the refurbishment processes in the far East.

 

[Amardeep-AC9MF]

It took a bunch of back and forth, but I've received an offer of full refund from Ali Express for the "faulty" MB8877A chips. I put that in quotes because they're not faulty. They are just some other innocent but probably working DIP-40 remarked as an FDC. They would not accept the claim they're counterfeit even though I posted pictures of a real one vs what I received. Even a layman could tell.

They wanted a video showing them not functioning. So I used a TRS-80 CoCo with an FDC pak equipped with a ZIF socket. In this case the parts were alien enough to prevent the computer from even starting so that part was easy. They only offered to refund the price of one since I only bothered filming one in the machine. Ugh. So I shot a video of putting the real one in and the machine working then one after another all ten showing either garbage or a black screen. A few days later they offered a full refund.

 

[shirsch]

It took a bunch of back and forth, but I've received an offer of full refund from Ali Express for the "faulty" MB8877A chips. I put that in quotes because they're not faulty. They are just some other innocent but probably working DIP-40 remarked as an FDC. They would not accept the claim they're counterfeit even though I posted pictures of a real one vs what I received. Even a layman could tell.

They wanted a video showing them not functioning. So I used a TRS-80 CoCo with an FDC pak equipped with a ZIF socket. In this case the parts were alien enough to prevent the computer from even starting so that part was easy. They only offered to refund the price of one since I only bothered filming one in the machine. Ugh. So I shot a video of putting the real one in and the machine working then one after another all ten showing either garbage or a black screen. A few days later they offered a full refund.

What a bunch of bandits they are. I have avoided Ali Express like the plague and your experience just reinforces that decision.

 

[Amardeep-AC9MF]

What a bunch of bandits they are. I have avoided Ali Express like the plague and your experience just reinforces that decision.

Two or three years ago I ordered a batch of them and they were real and worked. I've had many other success stories from them. You just have to be careful do a little homework.

1) Read the reviews and make sure the sellers rating is at least 95%. If there are no reviews on that product listing, move on. In this case I didn't read them because it was late and I was in a hurry. 100% of the reviews reported these chips don't work.

2) Don't go for expensive or popular parts (i.e. ATMega etc.) as those are very likely to be fakes. Current production just buy them from a proper distributor.

Lately the price of MB8877A has risen from $2 each to $15 each so they attracted the attention of the counterfeiters. After I got the bad ones I browsed around and most of the ad pictures are remarked fakes. The listing I bought from had a 3D rendering of a DIP 40 so I missed that clue as well. Had it been a real picture I probably would have been skeptical since Fujitsu uses a very distinct looking package. I suspect it would have been easier to win the claim they are counterfeit if there was a real one in the photo.

I will continue to buy some things from them as everything else I've purchased was fine. But I will not skip the due diligence again.

 

[Hugo Holden]

Had it been a real picture I probably would have been skeptical since Fujitsu uses a very distinct looking package. I suspect it would have been easier to win the claim they are counterfeit if there was a real one in the photo.

This is a major point in the war on spotting fakes, re-labelled and re-cycled chips.

One thing you could argue, since there is nothing wrong with recycling in itself (save the Planet & all that) the deception is the sellers try to pass the parts off as new. If they told the truth about the part's history, then you could use your own best judgement to decide if the cost & risk-benefit ratio was worth it. In essence, the sellers, by not telling the truth about their parts, this will ultimately hurt their own sales. Many people would buy recycled parts if they were good value for money and had been tested. This is because, for equipment repair, in general, especially if done as a service to customers, there is always the cost to consider.

And the fact the fakers cannot bear to part with Gold, somehow they find it disagreeable, it induces pain & nausea or dysphoria at the very least, it mostly upsets their gastrointestinal systems for at least a week with diarrhea and abdominal cramping. I have never received a fake IC or transistor with Gold plated pins.

(It is really because the parts with Gold have been sent to a different recycling Gold recovery system and while the fakers are prepared to re-tin plate pins to make them new, they are not prepared to re-Gold plate them as it is too costly)

Certain IC packages are super characteristic, especially with the usual 74 series 16 & 14 pin parts.

Signetics used an interesting light grey epoxy.

Motorola used an IC body with characteristically rounded corners and had a very shiny gloss black package surface. They also Gold plated the pins up until the mid to late 1970's.

To give an example, here is a classic 100% genuine Motorola part, look at the rounded package contours, the Gold plated pins and even the original packaging too:

NEW PARTS IN MOTOROLA PACKAGE MC834P 14-Pin Gold Dip Vintage IC - NOS | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for NEW PARTS IN MOTOROLA PACKAGE MC834P 14-Pin Gold Dip Vintage IC - NOS at the best online prices at eBay!

www.ebay.com.au

Also, original genuine transistors. I often buy ones that have these metal packages and Gold pins ( rather than epoxy package parts where fakes abound) :

MOTOROLA NN4258 GOLD PIN Factory Original Parts IC New Lot Quantity-5 | eBay

<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">MOTOROLA NN4258 Factory Original Parts IC New Lot Quantity-5.</p> <p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">GOLD PIN</p> <p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">PLEASE SEE ALL PICS</p>

www.ebay.com.au

Hitachi chips were a little like this too with the package shapes.

Early TI parts were made of a much harder resin and they have saw marks on the side where the chip bodies were cut apart at the factory.

So if you see a Motorola chip like a 7400, with an early 1970's date code, the correct package format and Gold plated pins you can be 100% sure it is genuine, or say the pale grey Signetics parts.

Other things are, the 54 series chips have been less faked than 74 types. And ceramic parts less faked than epoxy in this range of chips. So if you buy the 54 equivalent part (which is always ceramic body if genuine) it is usually a safer bet.

Watch out for highly shiny pins freshly re-plated, matte surfaces on the IC with what look like re-applied laser markings rather than ink. Also if the package surface is shiny on the bottom but matte looking surface on the top, alarm bells should ring, generally the package surface textures should be the same everywhere.

But the other thing is a "trusted seller" after a while you get used to the ebay sellers who have genuine new old stock parts and where the photos represent the actual parts you will get.

As I mentioned I got tricked because the parts sent didn't match the photo. And never buy a part of any kind that is displayed as a 3D rendered image. There are some sellers that use a lot of these. They are often not stocking sellers, and that is why they don't have the photo. You order the part, then they second source it, or create it in their production department from equivalent re-labelled parts.

 

[ardent-blue]

Something that sets my "Spidey Sense" tingling is "US Stock" or "US Seller" I have found some ATMEL AT27C256R-15 over in Poland. Looked correct. I'm just too lazy to drop the hammer.

 

[shirsch]

There are (or were, at least) a number of sellers claiming 'US ...' with "Chino, CA" as their location. The one I had the bad luck to purchase from actually shipped from - you guessed it - Chin*a*. eBay ignored my complaint.

 

[VERAULT]

I have noticed the same thing on the east coast with sellers saying they are in NJ, NY, and MA, but parts coming from china.

 

[Amardeep-AC9MF]

You can begin your suspicions when you see extended delivery times beyond 2-3 days.

 

[Hugo Holden]

Once again it is more deceptive conduct.

I think it is that the sellers of recycled parts from China have not figured out the human psychology of their customers; people hate feeling that they have been duped and didn't get what they paid for. As Neil Young said "They give you this but you pay for that"

As a result people will avoid the sellers because if they are deceptive in one or more areas, for example, told parts are new and they are not, parts are from the USA and they are not, or sell parts that just don't work, it doesn't encourage any trust.

Better to say; These parts originate from China, they are recycled & refurbished parts that have been tested and work. They are really good value for money (as often these Chinese parts are). The buyer then can make up their own mind. I personally think they would sell a lot more parts and most customers would be happy too.

 

[VERAULT]

Better to say; These parts originate from China, they are recycled & refurbished parts that have been tested and work. They are really good value for money (as often these Chinese parts are). The buyer then can make up their own mind. I personally think they would sell a lot more parts and most customers would be happy too.

You say this but forget to realize all advertising these days is built on complete lies. Your asking the Chinese to set the right example when the USA has taught the world the way to sell everything is by flat out lying to the customers. Why should the Chinese act any better than the US?

 

[Hugo Holden]

You say this but forget to realize all advertising these days is built on complete lies. Your asking the Chinese to set the right example when the USA has taught the world the way to sell everything is by flat out lying to the customers. Why should the Chinese act any better than the US?

It is a good question, it is not just China who should sharpen up their act in this area. The USA too and AU. We all have the opportunity to do better.

Not all cultures are big on fabrications though.

For example I have yet to come across the Japanese tell a porky, when it comes to anything in electronics engineering. They are super proud of their work and they find it dishonorable to lie about it. I'm not sure how well this applies to political systems though, but I have never encountered a misrepresented component, of any kind at all, from Japan. This is one of the many reasons I'm fond of Japanese electronics parts. We need to follow their lead. I have also had zero trouble from German sourced parts.

In the field of advertising now, I'm sure in the USA and Australia, inside the industry, they call it "perception management". It is about managing people's perceptions and beliefs, to steer or convert them into buying a product or using a service, and as you well know they come up with some pretty big ones where the truth gets stretched like a rubber band.

 

[ardent-blue]

Perception management works with folks that don't need working devices.

If you buy a device that performs to spec, you can drop it into a design and it should function as expected. It would be nice if a genuine part cost nothing, but at a minimum, you need to cover overhead and shipping. If devices cost nothing, there is no impetus to offer them for sale, thereby meaning no supply.

Consider this. "Everybody lies". Maybe. But who pays for shipping? Ever buy something from Red China? The product is very cheap and the shipping is free or maybe a few dollars.

Try shipping something to Europe. It isn't a "few dollars". Maybe a particular nation is scamming us as a "developing nation" and has the US pick up quite a bit of shipping costs, then they offer dodgy quality as a thank you.

I will buy [hopefully] from countries that aren't playing us, thank you very much..

 

[Chuck(G)]

If I buy through AliExpress, it's for items that I can chance quality or labeling with--mostly experimental stuff where the same gets sold on eBay for substantial markup.

Example: An MCU development board, claiming that said board contains an STM32F407 MCU. The programmer tells a different story, however--what's on the board is a GD32F407--made not by STMicro, but Beijing GigaDevice. As far as I can tell, the part behaves identically to the STMicro part (and quite possibly outperforms it). No skin off my nose. At any rate, my code works.

I've found that AliExpress has cleaned up their act recently. I ordered a CPU cooler and it arrived with some cooling fins bent. I immediately contacted AliExpress with photos of the damage and they refunded the purchase price within a couple of hours--and told me to keep the damaged unit. A few minutes' work with some smooth pliers and a probe restored the part to nearly-new condition.

I don't order discretes or ICs from AliExpress. My feeling there is that it's a real craps shoot..

 

[Hugo Holden]

Perception management works with folks that don't need working devices.

If you buy a device that performs to spec, you can drop it into a design and it should function as expected. It would be nice if a genuine part cost nothing, but at a minimum, you need to cover overhead and shipping. If devices cost nothing, there is no impetus to offer them for sale, thereby meaning no supply.

Consider this. "Everybody lies". Maybe. But who pays for shipping? Ever buy something from Red China? The product is very cheap and the shipping is free or maybe a few dollars.

Try shipping something to Europe. It isn't a "few dollars". Maybe a particular nation is scamming us as a "developing nation" and has the US pick up quite a bit of shipping costs, then they offer dodgy quality as a thank you.

I will buy [hopefully] from countries that aren't playing us, thank you very much..

What you have said simply shows that one of the better businesses to be in is shipping. I'm sure Warren Buffet knows this, buy into things people need & want , like toilet paper, chewing gum, and perhaps shipping.

 

[Al Kossow]

It took a bunch of back and forth, but I've received an offer of full refund from Ali Express for the "faulty" MB8877A chips. I put that in quotes because they're not faulty. They are just some other innocent but probably working DIP-40 remarked as an FDC. They would not accept the claim they're counterfeit even though I posted pictures of a real one vs what I received. Even a layman could tell.

They wanted a video showing them not functioning. So I used a TRS-80 CoCo with an FDC pak equipped with a ZIF socket. In this case the parts were alien enough to prevent the computer from even starting so that part was easy. They only offered to refund the price of one since I only bothered filming one in the machine. Ugh. So I shot a video of putting the real one in and the machine working then one after another all ten showing either garbage or a black screen. A few days later they offered a full refund.

fyi, real appear to be NOS 8877s

Lot of 27 Fujitsu MB8877A Ceramic DIP 40 Gold Legged IC SCRAP 6.0oz Gold IC | eBay

For sale is a lot of 27 Fujitsu MB8877A Ceramic DIP ICs. Some have bent legs. The total weight is 6.0 oz. Please look at the photos and feel free to ask any questions you may have. CY1<br>

www.ebay.com

 

[Amardeep-AC9MF]

fyi, real appear to be NOS 8877s

Lot of 27 Fujitsu MB8877A Ceramic DIP 40 Gold Legged IC SCRAP 6.0oz Gold IC | eBay

For sale is a lot of 27 Fujitsu MB8877A Ceramic DIP ICs. Some have bent legs. The total weight is 6.0 oz. Please look at the photos and feel free to ask any questions you may have. CY1<br>

www.ebay.com

Yeah, those are likely to go for a big premium due to the gold ceramic packaging. I don't think I'd want to use those for a build, either. Too nice. LOL.