Alternative OPA134 manufacturer or a fake chip?

[I_Forgot]

When you consider that Digi-Key usually has 20K+ in stock at any given time, pretty soon that starts to add up to real money.

You would never get digi-key to buy your fake parts, unless your company is named Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, Linear Technology, etc. If it was, you'd be in the real parts business and wouldn't bother selling fakes- it might hurt your other business selling the real ones.

I_F

 

[djk]

"You would never get digi-key to buy your fake parts"

Are you deliberately being obtuse?

Digi-Key was used as an example of stock levels and pricing, nothing more.

The potential problem is distributors in third world countries.

"How much does he stand to earn for all that effort? $20 on 100 chips? "

No, he makes $123 on 100 chips as per my example.

The stock levels at Digi-Key, based on four~five inventory turns per year indicate a potential profit on this one device on the order of $100,000.

You think it can't happen at a big distributor?

MCM has been caught selling blatent fake ON Semiconductor transistors that are in the $2 range. MCM is part of the Farnell/Newark group. You ever buy anything from them?

 

[Conrad Hoffman]

It's pretty easy to breadboard an opamp and check the major specifications. If somebody is faking chips, they're probably doing it with cheaper and less capable parts. You should see out of spec currents, offsets, or bandwidths. Hey, if they sound the same, maybe audio isn't as fussy as we thought? Bob Pease has written some good articles on testing opamps, and how to infer one hard to measure thing from another easy to measure thing. Check old What's all this..." columns, or his analog book. There are probably fake chips out there, but you can't tell from the markings and packaging, as these change on real parts quite frequently.