They are not Waaaaay obsolete at all. The only reason they went obsolete was because of the counterfeiting. There was nothing really wrong with them that “needed to be improved by a next generation device”.
A heads up, NTE has closed for good...it was a Philips North America company till 2001, then changed owners.
The people who sold it in 2022 are saying bad things about the current owners, I think that in view of a shrinking market, and NTE itself selling parts of dubious quality marked with their house numbers, the demise will not be regretted.
The people who sold it in 2022 are saying bad things about the current owners, I think that in view of a shrinking market, and NTE itself selling parts of dubious quality marked with their house numbers, the demise will not be regretted.
NTE was trash in 1988
We liked the catalog to use it as an index.
That's all it ever was to me or my kind.
A dictionary of transistors before the Internet.
How such a thing survived after dot com blows my mind.
We liked the catalog to use it as an index.
That's all it ever was to me or my kind.
A dictionary of transistors before the Internet.
How such a thing survived after dot com blows my mind.
Back in 88 NTE was a competing line to ECG. Somewhere along the line it was all absorbed/assimilated into one. We had a saying back then (that’s still mostly true today): “But ECG is PHILIPS, and PHILIPS isn’t worth a $#**”.
They survived for years due to the HUGE profits that the service shops would make on them, because they were 3 to 5 times the cost of industry standard types. The % mark-up was the same, so the higher cost part was “preferred”. Electronics are rarely repaired at the board level anymore - throw the whole thing out, rather than replacing the four burnt out transistors and the resistors that were collateral damage. The original market has evaporated. People who still rebuild/restore/repair good vintage gear and actually give a damn have always avoided ECG/NTE so nothing changes there.
They survived for years due to the HUGE profits that the service shops would make on them, because they were 3 to 5 times the cost of industry standard types. The % mark-up was the same, so the higher cost part was “preferred”. Electronics are rarely repaired at the board level anymore - throw the whole thing out, rather than replacing the four burnt out transistors and the resistors that were collateral damage. The original market has evaporated. People who still rebuild/restore/repair good vintage gear and actually give a damn have always avoided ECG/NTE so nothing changes there.