Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

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Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Sat Jan 30, 2016 4:05 am

Tackling The Scourge Of Counterfeit Components

Sep 10, 2015 — Counterfeiting of electronic products has long been a major global problem, but the size of the trade in handling such illegal parts has grown in recent years to the point that it is only just smaller than the market for illegal pharmaceutical products, which is universally recognized as being massive.

http://blog.rocelec.com/?p=4083#.Vquow7nSmzc


Counterfeiting: The Rising Threat To Electronics Manufacturers

Sep 10, 2015 — As a serious challenge to today’s global electronics supply chain, counterfeiting and gray market diversion of electronics components threaten the integrity of products for manufacturers. Counterfeits and obsolete electronics components contribute to dangerous business exposure for manufacturer’s customers, and compromise health [...]

http://www.mbtmag.com/article/2015/09/c ... AkEE.email

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by brad » Sun Jan 31, 2016 12:57 pm

I remember reading an article on hackaday (which perhaps you posted the link to Chuck?) which was mentioning how there were loads of counterfeit FTDI chips out there and that a windows update was going to render these ones useless with only the genuine ones being able to still work.

Also I am not sure exactly how true it is but chip manufactures (used to?) put little graphics on their chip dies as a way of seeing if someone else directly copied them. I'm not sure if this still takes place.

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:16 am

Brad,

There are people in business and they are all about making money. Following the laws or following ethics do not make them any money so they don't have many concerns there unless they get fined, punished or caught. Their only concern is making money and they require their employees to do what they want and get over on other people. In fact, they surround themselves with unethical people who don't have any scruples. If you worked for someone like that, you're might be told to do stuff that doesn't make any sense and other people who just want to make money at the company would take issue with someone who follows the rules.

It kind of reminds me of this:
When MOS Technology arrived at Wescon, they found that exhibitors could not sell anything on the show floor. They rented the MacArthur Suite at the St. Francis Hotel and directed customers there to purchase the processors. At the suite the processors were stored in large jars to imply that the chips were in production and readily available. The customers did not know the bottom half of each jar contained non-functional chips.[37] The chips were $20 and $25 while the documentation package was an additional $10.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502

This is the kind of behavior that businessmen do to survive. I heard other stories that Commodore sold broken or non-functioning computers for Christmas knowing they would be coming back but that they had to meet the Christmas demand to have the presents ready for the Christmas sale.

Fortunately for society, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak got a functional chip or maybe history would be totally different today.


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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Thu Feb 04, 2016 7:22 am

brad wrote:I remember reading an article on hackaday (which perhaps you posted the link to Chuck?) which was mentioning how there were loads of counterfeit FTDI chips out there and that a windows update was going to render these ones useless with only the genuine ones being able to still work.
That was in 2014 I believe.

There is a new case in 2016 where FTDI is allegedly bricking chips again:

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontr ... -gate-2-0/

The previous bricking was reported here:

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/ft ... tdi-ft232/

They must be geniuses over there at EE Blog for finding it.

This also brings up a liability issue. Who is liable if there is an FTDI device in something important or something mission critical and it gets bricked?

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by brad » Thu Feb 04, 2016 1:05 pm

I had no idea that Commodore and MOS devices was so unethical! I wonder if they would still be around today if they had conducted business a little differently...

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Thu Feb 04, 2016 3:07 pm

brad wrote:I had no idea that Commodore and MOS devices was so unethical! I wonder if they would still be around today if they had conducted business a little differently...
There is a long list of capers in the history of Commodore.
The 6501/6502 introduction in print and at Wescon was an enormous success. The downside was the extensive press coverage got Motorola's attention. In October 1975, Motorola reduced the price of a single 6800 microprocessor from $175 to $69. The $300 system design kit was reduced to $150 and it now came with a printed circuit board.[39] On November 3, 1975, Motorola sought an injunction in Federal Court to stop MOS Technology from making and selling microprocessor products. They also filed a lawsuit claiming patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. Motorola claimed that seven former employees joined MOS Technology to create that company's microprocessor products.[40]

Motorola was a billion-dollar company with a plausible case and lawyers. On October 30, 1974, Motorola had filed numerous patent applications on the microprocessor family and was granted twenty-five patents. The first was in June 1976 and the second was to Bill Mensch on July 6, 1976 for the 6820 PIA chip layout. These patents covered the 6800 bus and how the peripheral chips interfaced with the microprocessor.[41] Motorola began making transistors in 1950 and had a portfolio of semiconductor patents. Allen-Bradley decided not to fight this case and sold their interest in MOS Technology back to the founders. Four of the former Motorola engineers were named in the suit: Chuck Peddle, Will Mathys, Bill Mensch and Rod Orgill. All were named inventors in the 6800 patent applications. During the discovery process, Motorola found that one engineer, Mike James, had ignored Peddle's instructions and brought his 6800 design documents to MOS Technology.[42] In March 1976, the now independent MOS Technology was running out of money and had to settle the case. They agreed to drop the 6501 processor, pay Motorola $200,000 and return the documents that Motorola contended were confidential. Both companies agreed to cross-license microprocessor patents.[43] That May, Motorola dropped the price of a single 6800 microprocessor to $35. By November Commodore had acquired MOS Technology.[44][45]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502

My feelings are they never really had the full rights to the technology and you really have to read between the lines in what was going on and they returned documents that Motorola contended were confidential. If the documents were never theirs and they needed to use them for development but had to return them; Then what impact does having to return the documents have on them owning the technology? I would really like to read the agreement in the settlement because some feel the fact that Commodore could only use masks to make the 6502 meant that they didn't have the full rights to it. I feel that Commodore was never a real company because they used Mercenaries like Microsoft to develop BASIC. That means there was no in house development at that time. Another person helped develop the SID chip and he worked on the chip for only a month but the big names who created this technology left and I feel Commodore was shy of MOS after they were sued. Why did the big names leave? MOS lost once due to patent infringement and keeping them around would be a liability because they have to be above the appearance of impropriety. There are really all these gaps in development and the fact that Commodore had to buy the Amiga technology meant that they didn't have any real development going on in the meantime because they never updated the 6502 or 6510 chip. The fact was Commodore went bankrupt and needed Irving Gould to bail them out and companies refinance when they are in trouble so they took on more debt and didn't pay their taxes on a billion dollar company:

Irs (Internal Revenue Service) Says Commodore Owes $74.1 Million In Back Taxes
http://articles.philly.com/1989-01-04/b ... tional-irs

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by brad » Sat Feb 13, 2016 10:39 am

So all in all, they just used (or stole) other companies / peoples designs and put it together to make their own products. Such a shame since the commodore 64 at least was a fond computer of mine back in the 80's and early 90's.

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Mon Feb 15, 2016 5:11 am

brad wrote:So all in all, they just used (or stole) other companies / peoples designs and put it together to make their own products. Such a shame since the commodore 64 at least was a fond computer of mine back in the 80's and early 90's.
After the introduction of the Pet, I never saw Commodore give any schools anything. There were Commodore Pets in my elementary school but only those on the honor roll were allowed to use them.

Jack Tramiel was ruthless in business and he allegedly ordered a lot of stock and never paid for them just to drive the price down of certain components.

My college ordered a sidecar from Commodore and it never came so the department head took the loss because the equipment was paid by our student activity fee and it would have taken months to go to court. Our department head said he knew from that action that Commodore was going to go out of business because it meant they were not paying their bills.

Commodore sold non-working computers for the Christmas rush they knew would be coming back. My relatives knew a guy from work who plugged in two Commodore 128's which blew when he plugged them into the wall. I bought a Commodore 128 that started having video problems where the video became pixelated.

A man at PAUG (Amiga User Group) bought Commodore stock and went down to the Commodore stock meetings in the Bahamas to have a voice in the Amiga community and he was arrested for speaking.

Commodore was an economic cult. The magazines and the company told customers that Commodore users were more loyal. Jack Tramiel is in a 25 year anniversary video at the Computer Museum who said there was no loyalty. Because of the price war, they basically said that Apple computers were more expensive than Commodore or IBM computers and isn't it a shame to see a couple kids strapped to an IBM or Apple when each one could have a Commodore 64. When Commodore went bankrupt, none of the user groups that were pro Commodore sued to prevent the breakup of Commodore and give something to the users. Bankruptcy was a sore wake up call to the users of the economic cult who felt their computer was better and users were more loyal.

I think the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 could have survived if they were sold to Creative Micro Designs but they didn't have enough money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Micro_Designs

There were a lot of people who spoke up for Commodore to hog the microphone that I feel never did anything for the Amiga users after Commodore went bankrupt. They just had their moment of fame.

Chuck Peddle should be recognized as single handedly starting a lot of computer companies based on the 6502 computer. Without him, the computer revolution would have been different as we know it. I think the Commodore 128 was basically meant to hold off any competition from the Z80 which was popular but the Z80 cost about twice as much as the 6502. Therefore the Z80 never really made a comeback.

People are still writing programs for the Amiga and using the Amiga. I've seen Amiga towers and I'm just amazed. People are still using the Amiga's because they are just that good.

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Garth » Mon Feb 15, 2016 6:25 am

I read many years ago that Commodore, at least for a while, was not even testing new product before it went out the door, considering the expense to be greater than the expense of having the customer catch the failures! I consider that to be at least unethical, to put it mildly. I have also read (I know, I know, I should be verifying this; but I'm somewhat confident I understood correctly) that Tramiel placed a huge order for 6502's or 6510's, causing MOS to invest in a lot of new equipment, then canceled the order, putting them in a panic, then offered to buy the company for a super low price, and they had no choice but to sell to him. There are certain things about the man that I cannot admire.
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Mon Feb 15, 2016 2:14 pm

Garth,

I wonder if Tramiel's interest in a semiconductor company had anything to do with his losses in the adding machines or calculator business to the Japanese?

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Suddenly, everyone went calculator crazy. Machines, equivalent in power to those that are now given away free with gallons of petrol and insurance quotes, were sold for $100+, then a perfectly reasonable price. Commodore, by now used to running into problems, ran into a big one. Texas Instruments, Commodore's chief supplier of the main chips in the calculators, took a leaf out of Tramiel's book. "Cutting out the middle man", they launched their own range of calculators. Of course, they used
their own chips at a fraction of the cost, and this had a disastrous effect on Commodore.

Chips prices dropped from $12 to a buck each. Commodore had warehouses full of calculators built containing chips at the old price. After years of steadily increasing profits, 1975 showed Commodore making a $5 million loss on sales of nearly $50 million. It taught Tramiel and Gould a lesson: relying on outside suppliers for key components was risky. Tramiel commented later: "From there on, I felt the only way to continue in the electronics business was to control our own destiny."
http://www.commodore.ca/history/company ... istory.htm

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Garth » Mon Feb 15, 2016 6:11 pm

The article says, "But the important acquisition was MOS Technology, which became known as MosTek," which according to Wikipedia, is not true. They were two different companies, both started in 1969 but by different people, and with somewhat different markets.
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Tue Feb 16, 2016 2:32 am

I guess my question is: Are there are lot of questions on the 6502 on how things came to be or why things operate the way they do? Could this be the lack of documentation because Mike James brought documents that Motorola felt were confidential and returned them in the settlement?

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Re: Two articles on avoiding counterfeit components

Post by Chuckt » Fri Apr 01, 2016 3:15 am

brad wrote:So all in all, they just used (or stole) other companies / peoples designs and put it together to make their own products. Such a shame since the commodore 64 at least was a fond computer of mine back in the 80's and early 90's.
There really wasn't a law back then protecting companies from this practice until 1984:

Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984
The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 (or SCPA) is an act of the US Congress that makes the layouts of integrated circuits legally protected upon registration, and hence illegal to copy without permission.
Prior to 1984, it was not necessarily illegal to produce a competing chip with an identical layout. As the legislative history for the SCPA explained, patent and copyright protection for chip layouts, chip topographies, was largely unavailable.[1] This led to considerable complaint by U.S. chip manufacturers—notably, Intel, which, along with the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), took the lead in seeking remedial legislation—against what they termed "chip piracy." During the hearings that led to enactment of the SCPA, chip industry representatives asserted that a pirate could for $10,000 copy a chip design that had cost its original manufacturer upwards from $100,000 to design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicondu ... ct_of_1984

In fact, until the leader of the Atari Democrats sponsored the bill, it was perfectly legal:
Hart cosponsored the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 with Senator Charles Mathias, which was signed into law. The act created a new category of intellectual property rights for mask works for computer chips that protected the Silicon Valley from cheap foreign imitations.[10] Similar legislation had been proposed in every Congress since 1979.[10] It led to Hart being called the leader of the Atari Democrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Hart

MOS did this so in their minds, they weren't breaking the law because there was no law against it.

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