I ordered a lot of 10 7555 timer chips from China and 2 of them were NOT 7555s.

UTC7608D I did find that it is made by Unisonic of Korea and a site that even listed a PDF datasheet. But no datasheet or description of what the chip is? At least not one in English...

I did find the other one: 7665S (not 7556 a variant of the 7555 and also made by Renesas) someone is a bit dyslexic maybe.
Made by Renesas (Intersil) and it's a CMOS Micropower Over/Under Voltage Detector. A HI and LO settable voltage alarm w/ hysteresis set by resistors on the inputs w/ alarm outputs. Interesting chip...

Poorly marked 7555s (near impossible to read), bent pins, but hey they were cheap and they tested good. No manufacturer marking so no datasheet, maybe they will work. Just something to play around with.

 

UTC7608D
Aliexpress listings say voltage regulator.

 

Aliexpress listings say voltage regulator.

Interesting... They want more for 1 of them than I paid for the 10/lot of timers. Something I could use if I had some specs to work from.

 

Interesting... They want more for 1 of them than I paid for the 10/lot of timers. Something I could use if I had some specs to work from.

Why beat yourself up like that? Mouser, Digikey have real stuff and folks like Arrow Electronics ship for free. I don't want to get all preachy but seriously, where is the value?

 

Arrow gets a good bit of my business, but I'm a cheapskate I guess... And if I'm not in a hurry I don't mind waiting to save 90% even with the aggravation. But hey I'm not usually in a hurry or have customers depending on my producing a first quality reliable product for them. When I do need guaranteed quality or a part fast I go to the US brokers.

 

Arrow gets a good bit of my business, but I'm a cheapskate I guess... And if I'm not in a hurry I don't mind waiting to save 90% even with the aggravation. But hey I'm not usually in a hurry or have customers depending on my producing a first quality reliable product for them. When I do need guaranteed quality or a part fast I go to the US brokers.

Fair enough and nothing personal, for sure. I guess I have a low aggravation tolerance for vendors screwing people which gets worse as I get older and I don't like to encourage them by continued trade.

I particularly have a basic philosophical problem with vendors that knowingly sell bogus parts for a few bucks knowing that customers won't make a fuss over such small amounts. The problem, as we have seen even here on AAC, is that unsuspecting buyers, frequently noobs, purchase what they think are LM35s from AliBaba and get a remarked NPN transistor or 2n3055s from Amazon and get some tiny die in a TO-3 can that burns out when any significant current is pulled. In each case, much time and energy was lost figuring out the problem that could have been better spent on the actual project. I just hate to see any business done with that kind of vendor.

Just my 0.56 (cuz I buy from franchised distributors - )
'nite

 

Like here. 4 days, 29 posts of head-scratching. 200 fake CD4060s. Savin' some money now..
https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...ed-fake-chinese-ic.158658/page-2#post-1380253

Sorry to hijack the thread..

 

I'm pretty sure some of the chips I buy are most likely scrap for the most part. Probably passed the function test (some of them) but failed visual inspection due to poor or no markings (my experience), bent pins, floor sweepings, cheap Chinese copies, etc. I have had some bad lots, but very infrequently. And this lot was one of them and I was reimbursed when I complained about it. Jack Ma has instituted an anti-piracy/counterfeit policy and the vendors are cleaning up their act. The way I see it is why pay a broker to import Chinese products when I can avoid his markup and overhead and buy them direct. The other side of the coin is I don't buy US products from China. I've been buying from China for many years so my eyes are WIDE OPEN.