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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : They show lots of MX170s
| Author | Message | ||||
| Tinine Guru  Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Not convinced but I have requested a quote Craig |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Careful.... I smell a scam.  The number of chips they show in stock for the SSOP is 32,909 when there are HUGE lead-times at most sellers, and even at Microchip Direct itself. ALL of the PIC32MX170 series on that site show stock levels of between 26K and 32K, and I simply am not really prepared to believe that - they would have been found and bought up by everyone looking for chips by now. That kind of stock of chips that are hard to find and in demand everywhere else, smells quite fishy to me. And they are charging US$1.40 each, or US$1.17 for 100+, which is about 300% cheaper then even Microchip Direct can sell them for.... They'll take your money, I'm sure, but I would doubt you would get the chips. I've never heard of that company before you linked to it, and they are certainly not on my list of reputable parts houses.  Edited 2022-12-11 20:59 by Grogster Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Yup!  |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7937 |
LOL! Would you like to buy this bridge? Very cheap to you! Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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IanRogers Senior Member  Joined: 09/12/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 151 |
I got a few MX170s ( dip variety ) from RS here in blighty... They still have a good stock.. No SOIC's though... I didn't check all the variants. I'd give my left arm to be ambidextrous |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Well, there you go!  Very glad you spotted that in time though, and thank you for posting it here in the forums, as it also makes other members aware of this scam site for those of us - like myself - who are still looking for chips. Those ratings in your second link are not all that fab, are they!? (rhetorical) UNFORTUNATELY, this kind of scam for chips will be an on-going thing for a while, and it is something everyone needs to be aware of. Scammers LOVE to take advantage of situations like the global silicon-chip shortages, to scam people desperate for stock out of their money. There IS no simple, quick solution to the shortages, and I expect more then a few people are having to redesign for chips that ARE available - such as the RP2040 for example. They are plentiful and cheap despite the shortages elsewhere, so perhaps Raspberry Pi just luckily had a production run of a million chips or something, just before the virus shut everything down. For whatever reason, the 2040 chip is readily available and cheap, and I have even redesigned a couple of my things to use the Waveshare Zero module instead of the 170 chip, just in case I need something fast, but simply don't have the 170 chips to fill the order. The WS Zero module and similar also mean I can cut down on the component count on the main PCB, as so much is included on the module, including the USB socket etc, so it is not ALL bad, if you have to redesign for the 2040!!! But I digress..... EDIT: @ Ian - Yes, the DIP/DIL 170's are available in small quantities, but I tend to use the SSOP the most due to it's small size, but still being easy enough to hand-solder. I was asking for SSOP's in a thread recently, and Robert Rozee linked me to DigiKey who have stock, and I was able to buy some from them. They are charging US$5.66 per chip though, so that alone makes the first website's one buck price EXTREMELY suspicious even before we had confirmation.  For the price of ONE 170 chip in SSOP these days, you can buy a complete WS Zero module based on the 2040, so the price point is certainly good for considering redesign for the 2040 based processor. Anything NEW I design these days, is centered on the WS Zero module, cos I know I can get it, it's cheap, and means less overall SMD assembly for me on the host board, so, despite the chip shortages, Peter Mather's port of MMBASIC to the 2040 chip is a real godsend in this day of chip shortages. Edited 2022-12-12 10:31 by Grogster Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
RP2040 + MMBasic is a dream combo for me. I have a bunch of MX170s in case I need to do something with ByPic in the future. Looking forward to more of Volhout's PIO tutorials; exciting stuff  Craig |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Yes, me too on the PIO lessons. I essentially know nothing about them OTHER then that they exist and that one of them generates the VGA signal on the VGA version of the PM firmware. It will be interesting for me to learn something new. Purely out of interest, did you get a reply to your quote request from that scammer website? I see in all the horrible reviews, that it seems they are fast to reply, but as soon as you pay them some money, they simply stop responding and nothing is ever received. Sadly and disturbingly, I see they have been scamming some people for THOUSANDS of bucks. Some people are desperate for chips, and this kind of scam just makes the pain of the supply chain issues so much worse. Makes you wonder how people like that can sleep at night....  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
No reply yet but I seem to remember something about this person actually operating out of the US. Still Sunday over there. Craig |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
I just bid $12,000 for 30,000 MIC2981 chips Gonna wind 'em up Craig |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5089 |
EDIT: deleted Edited 2022-12-14 01:50 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| Bowden_P Senior Member Joined: 20/03/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 162 |
Hi Tinine, Why not ask for some samples and see what the reaction is. If they send them deny reception and don't pay anything - a kind of reverse con !! With best regards, Paul. Edited 2022-12-14 09:34 by Bowden_P Nothing so constant as change. |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
They didn't bite (dammit )Craig |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
...and thanks to your posting this thread, anyone here who reads it, will also know this is a scam, and subsequently won't get bitten either. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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