Well, so much for the old maxim

John Miles, KE5FX

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Jul 13, 2020, 3:03:32 AM7/13/20

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"Never buy Maxim."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-13/analog-devices-is-said-near-deal-to-buy-maxim-for-17-billion

-- john, KE5FX

Gerhard Hoffmann

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Jul 13, 2020, 4:06:25 AM7/13/20

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Am 13.07.20 um 09:03 schrieb John Miles, KE5FX:
> "Never buy Maxim."

That saying come from people who would now & then buy some
standard parts. When you let them do custom chips, like our
former fiber optic company in Berlin with a > 300 people
pilot pre-production line and mass production in the east,
then you felt besieged by their busy salesdroids.

Let's hope that AD handles that as good as the Hittite
aquisition.

Standard products were never really important for them.
Funny enough, I have some LT1028 from Maxim that I got
from their local representative. Methinks they never
made it into their standard portfolio, although they
were OK, AFAICT.

> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-13/analog-devices-is-said-near-deal-to-buy-maxim-for-17-billion
>
> -- john, KE5FX
>

Gerhard, DK4XP

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Jul 13, 2020, 11:00:02 AM7/13/20

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On Mon, 13 Jul 2020 10:06:19 +0200, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk...@arcor.de>
wrote:

I got the impression that Maxim was more interested in high-volume
custom business than selling to ordinary customers. And that when a
giant customer stopped buying, they dumped the parts and the small
customers. That happened to us twice.

TI seems to keep parts available forever. They will still sell you an
SN7400N.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

Dimiter_Popoff

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Jul 13, 2020, 1:16:05 PM7/13/20

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Maxim are the only source of really good/fast comparators, have been
that for almost 30 years now. I have used a DAC of theirs which has
been available via the normal distributors for 20+ years.
ADI have been very good maintaining product availability, I can still
buy unique opamps of theirs I have first designed in around 1990.
Apart from the general bad feeling about mergers merging all into
one which seems to be the way things are going I would not mind
this particular one.

Dimiter

======================================================
Dimiter Popoff, TGI http://www.tgi-sci.com
======================================================
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/

John Larkin

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Jul 13, 2020, 2:42:51 PM7/13/20

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On Mon, 13 Jul 2020 20:15:57 +0300, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

We designed the MAX9690 fast comparator in to the NIF timing system.
After some months of use, they all began to fail. MAXIM discontinued
it without notice. We had to replace about 3000 comparators with
little baby boards.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sae7sbcei095jhx/OnBoard.jpg?dl=0

ADI has really good comparators, the ADCMP series. ADCMP582 has 180 ps
prop delay and 37 ps output edges.

Maxim hurt us on their FLECAP and Dallas delay lines, too.

Ricketty C

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Jul 13, 2020, 4:10:53 PM7/13/20

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It is highly unusual for any company to discontinue a device with literally no warning. They typically announce the product will be discontinued a year or more in advance. When Lattice discontinued an FPGA they gave some six months of advance notice, but you could order parts to be delivered over the next three years.

I've only ever ordered token amounts through my company, (components are typically bought by the contract manufacturers) yet I get announcements of PCNs and EOL directly from manufacturers.

If Maxim really does things this way it will be good for them to be bought and run properly.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Lasse Langwadt Christensen

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Jul 13, 2020, 4:30:26 PM7/13/20

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maybe not outright discontinue, I think the common story I've heard it that
you can get sample quantities but when it comes time to buy for production there's a 50 week leadtime and the minimum order is a truckload

bitrex

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Jul 13, 2020, 4:43:55 PM7/13/20

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There going to shit up LTSpice you just know it some asshole is going to
be a "big thinker" and turn it into a web app

John Larkin

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Jul 13, 2020, 4:44:15 PM7/13/20

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The way we have found out about EOL on Maxim parts is that purchased
chips aren't shipped.

Once I had an entire EE class at Mississippi State each get the max,
10 samples, of parts that Maxim wouldn't ship. I paid the kids the
unit price for all the parts. Beer money.

Maxim doesn't make anything that's good enough to justify ordering
from them. I read an interview with the founder who bragged that they
use nonstandard pinouts so customers only have one source.

bitrex

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Jul 13, 2020, 4:47:10 PM7/13/20

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They make one of the cheaper i2c isolators going but I haven't had a
chance to test it, yet.

<https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Maxim-Integrated/MAX14933ASE%2b?qs=vS28%252BL64B%2FqPTW%252BQJafmdA%3D%3D>

Ricketty C

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Jul 13, 2020, 6:14:02 PM7/13/20

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That is easy enough to deal with. Don't design things in until they show up as stocked somewhere in reasonable quantity. I can only recall one time I designed in a chip that was not in inventory somewhere. A very persuasive TI salesman got me to design in a comms interface chip that was new by getting me something like 50 samples in time for the prototypes. I probably should not have done that, but it had some nice features and I can be a sucker for functionality even if it's not part of the spec.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Ricketty C

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Jul 13, 2020, 6:20:04 PM7/13/20

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They had an analog switch with higher voltage and very low resistance that was pretty unique... until ADI made one very much like it. The pin out was the same, but in slightly different packages, the Maxim part being a bit wider. I designed my footprint so I could use either part. One had excessive toe and the other had excessive heel. Works fine either way. The ADI part was cheaper to start, then they raised their price. Now three of them cost as much as the FPGA on the board. But it lets me connect to a 50 ohm load with minimal distortion.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Phil Hobbs

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Jul 14, 2020, 11:00:16 AM7/14/20

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I used to really like the MAX900--a 10-ns quad comparator with latches.
The latches were in the input stage, so you could stretch the output
pulses by AC-coupling the output to the latch pin. There was enough
prop delay that this didn't oscillate, in contrast to a lot of other parts.

They changed fabs and discontinued it, of course.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

Rich S

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Jul 28, 2020, 9:00:47 PM7/28/20

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Is it a good idea for designers to have their buyer occasionally check all
their important vendors for "last time buys" of parts? Not just parts in
active production, but also parts for potential use and those "favorites".

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

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Jul 28, 2020, 9:47:19 PM7/28/20

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There are services that do that. You send them your inventory list and
a monthly fee, and they alert you to EOL issues. It makes sense to
centralize that function.