More fake transistors

[taj]

I'm pretty sure these are fakes based on the size of the die. It's pretty telling.

Compare to the photo of real ones on Rod Elliot's website.

The description on eBay said they were manufacturing surplus, and as someone who works for manufacturer, I know we unload our surplus supplies for 10% value when we change our products. So the story is always plausible. I think not this time though.

Real ones:
http://sound.westhost.com/fake/fakes-r1.jpg

Mine:

[djk]

I've never see a die that small in a TO-3 before!

[taj]

Yeah, the die measures about 2mm square. I have over 60 of these beauties.

..Todd

[head_spaz]

I hope you left some major negative feedback on the dude.
A lot of sellers won't leave buyer feedback until after the buyer rates the seller. This allows them to withhold their rating until they're sure you gotten screwed and learned to smile about it. It allows them to blackmail the buyer into giving good feedback even when it is undeserved. This is just one of e-bay's bad policies, but then they only care about sales commission.
Caveat emptor! Buyer beware!!!

I've had sellers retaliate by leaving negative feedback against me for rating them poorly, which is the rating they themselves EARNED, but even so, it's worth it to get the message out so other buyers don't get screwed unwittingly. Their retaliation has very little impact against a buyer anyway. Who cares if the buyer is a flake as long as the check clears?
Nowadays, nobody seems to care about anyone but themselves. Of course our group here seems to be an exception to that rule, which is why I love this forum so much.

Another bad e-bay policy is allowing both parties to mutually withdraw their feedback. This goes along with what I posted above, giving sellers an unfair advantage. When I see mutually withdrawn feedback, I know both parties are more concerned about other's opinions, than of their own. It means someone compromised their integrity, and that kind of compromising is a character flaw in my book. If feedback isn't about integrity and character, then what purpose does it serve? If feedback is swapped back and forth for gain, it becomes nothing more than bought and paid for advertising. And we all know that advertising rarely represents the whole truth.
And even if feedback ends up being nothing more than advertising, then I would make sure to advertise the guy's negative character traits in his feedback. But if he indeed earned it, I would never withdraw it.

Off Topic rant/
I swear this whole world revolves around advertising. If they're not cramming it down your throat on TV every four minutes, it's the radio, your telephone, your mailbox, your inmail, it's on your doorstep, it's under your wiper blades, it's on your bought and paid for DVD's, and it's even on your milk cartons.
I mean holyschitt ... think about it... I could become richer than Bill Gates if I could re-engineer a moth's DNA to be hatched carrying it's own banner add. "Tan don't burn... use coppertone!"

/soapbox

[taj]

Feel better now head_spaz?

..Todd

[Eva]

These transistors look genuine due to the manufacturing style, I bet they are actually made by On-Semi, but they are definitely *not* MJ21194, I think that they are some other lower power model REBRANDED.

[geminni]

Judging by the Onsemis datasheet that is fake.

You can see on their data sheet that printing in third row is not ok.

[geminni]

I have MJ15003 and MJ15004 marked like tajs and mine are also fake!

I tested it with acetone and printing came off like it was washed with water!

[grjr]

I never new you could pop the tops off TO-3 transistors, what is the easiest way to get the tops off?

[djk]

Motorola used to make a driver transistor for McIntosh that I think was essentially the die from a 40W MJE150xx in a TO-3 case.

Since that does look like a real Motorola coin-header under the die, I wonder if they got some of the surplus McIntosh parts and re-marked them?