This sort of thing really annoys me. Part numbers are for use of engineers, not for the marketing dept. If you change the specs, change the part number.

▲

rpaddock 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I can see both sides of this. I really want different part numbers for the same reason you do.

However we deal with a lot of regulated products and to just open a case at one of the Government Paper-Pusher Regulators will cost us $5,000 to just change the part number. We are a small company and $5k hurts.

▲

vanderZwan an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I'm sure it does and you have my sympathies, but your situation would not be a reason to let Texas freakin' Instruments off the hook. They're not exactly "a small company", and I wouldn't be surprised if the $5k would have been cheaper than dealing with the response to this, so this just comes across as incompetence on their end.

▲

rsynnott an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

... How do the "paper-pusher regulators" feel about getting a completely different part unannounced? I would guess unhappy, tbh. Like based on the thread it's not trivial changes.

	▲	Jalad 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Kind of like keeping a certain plane model number the same, and claiming that re-training isn't needed even when it clearly is

▲

an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲

rbanffy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Kind of.

I want all 7400s to be four NAND gates, regardless of how they are implemented. As long as the results are correct, you might as well put a little ARM controller pretending to be four NAND gates.

For analog parts, I agree any change to the data sheet should receive at least a different suffix letter.

	▲	OptionOfT an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I disagree. At a certain moment you start to rely on behavior, knowingly or unknowingly. These kind of changes might surface bugs that you never had. https://xkcd.com/1172/

▲

buescher 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It annoys me too but part numbers are not a spec but more of a strong hint. The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Even for a 2N2222 or whatever.

▲

derefr 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Keeping in mind, though, that this is a jellybean part. You're supposed to be able to order "a" 5532 without specifying the supplier, because many vendors produce "a" 5532, and they're all the same. Different vendors' 5532s are supposed to be able to be treated as the same SKU — literally dumped into co-mingled stock in warehouses — with no ill consequence!

(And yes, until TI's recent move, that was true of the 5532. All the other vendors' 5532s had matching datasheet specs, including the 22V max input voltage. Because a design that was built for "a" 5532 was usually built to run it up to 100%; and that a vendor couldn't offer their part as a swap-in if it couldn't do that.)

But now, if your purchasing department (or the supplier they purchase from) happens to order TI 5532s — or if the warehouse they're sourcing from has comingled any TI 5532s into the general 5532 stock — then your product is now broken, with no real recourse except to change your entirely supply chain to one that specifically excludes TI.

▲

consp 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The EEVBlog[1] video about this has a nice example of only a single chinese manufacturer offering the same stuff as TI now does, even with the same PNP instead of NPN topology. All the others are comparable to the original.

1: https://youtu.be/22ZmmZ67SMY

	▲	rbanffy an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Would be nice to call it a 5532a or something like that.

▲

cryo32 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

MPF102 is my favourite there.

“It’s a JFET” is your only guarantee.

Buy binned parts and design spec spread into it.

▲

Our_Benefactors 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test.

Is this backed up by court precedent? This seems like you could easily claim damages due to a differently speccd part.

I’m not doubting that’s how the industry operates, but it seems wrong so I’m curious what is supporting such a dysfunctional form of doing business.

	▲	ofalkaed 9 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It has worked this way since the days of the vacuum tube, so there probably is some legal precedence somewhere. I think part of this with the NE5532 is just that these days most EEs spend most of their time with digital where the data sheet and its spec is absolute; in the linear world the spec sheet is an ideal and an average because the parts themselves are an ideal and the real world never lines up with the math. Back when the NE5532 came out it was still common to see power supplies that were unregulated or barely regulated or cheap regulators with poor tolerance that would vary a fair amount with wall voltage and massive tolerances on passives, data sheets and EEs took this into account, most parts would survive max voltage but there would be a higher failure rate, so run at 70% or 80% and you don't have to worry about it. In these days of cheap SMPS and EEs that are trained with a strong lean towards digital and much improved IC fab, the max seems to be treated as the max safe voltage for good reliability and life, and you don't have to worry much about the tolerances of everything else so much. Back in the 90s when I was learning this stuff, the old EEs scolded me when ever I ran at max voltage and would patiently explain it all to me and that even if it can operate at that voltage, you can't be certain your PS will still be putting out that voltage in a year, parts drift as they age and accidents happen and the world is not ideal. They were right.
	▲	buescher 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They’re just not really standardized at all, especially semiconductors. Not in the sense you’d expect naively. Some were a long time ago, and supposedly the old Japanese sc parts were, down to die geometry and process. But otherwise, the part number means “this is like the part with a similar number first made by someone else”, not “this is an exact replacement in every way”