I've been seeing that more and more as of late, parts that were common simply drying up. The 7400 series is going through something similar, although the pinout on that series were so popular the odds of finding something that will work are pretty good.

I don't know what a good answer is long term. Unless some process comes out that allows small manufacturers to produce small lots really inexpensive I don't think there will be a good answer.

From a hobbiest point of view though it's probably not too bad news. With some of the various processes coming down the tubes we'll be able to fabricate some truely amazing things in 20 or so years.

 

Keeping watch on fleabay is a good wheeze.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lot-of-10-NE5...ryZ36332QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Hehe, the 555 is one of those chips even the large companies with occasionally gear up for and produce several billion more. My local cost is about $0.25 each, and I could get quantity discounts. Don't need to, I already have several hundred in tubes here and there. When I kick the bucket someone is getting some really old parts.

 

Hi All,

This is "Littlediode", and I hope it is acceptable to reply to some of the useful comments that have been made here, to hopefully serve you better.

I have just read this post, and would like to thank you for making the comments. Feedback is important to us, so all I can say on this is:

“If we do something good tell your friends, and IF WE DO SOMETHING BAD TELL US!”

Everyone is correct in saying we are expensive, and no one knows that more than me. I feel it is only fair I highlight why we are expensive and how I hope we can better our prices in future.

We are a small company, have not been around a long time, but like yourselves were and are still fed up with certain companies that expect a minimum order requirement - some want a minimum order of $100, others want you to buy 50 pcs of a part, when you only require 2 pcs and so on. Not to mention some of the high shipping costs!

So we wanted to provide a way whereby everyone can get what they want, at what we hoped would be the best acceptable price.

This brings more onto why pricing has turned out to be a difficult process for us, and especially because of ebay and paypal. We are getting hammered out there on ebay if we sell $1000 on average about $300 goes to ebay and paypal. In addition to the high listing fees, we list over 35,000 components on ebay – average listing fee per item $0.05, every MONTH, if we sell or we don’t sell anything, we pay the listing fees.

That is one of the biggest reasons we are looking at offering a much discounted price structure on our web site, and this will be happening very soon.

We have already implimentated multi-currency functionality on our site, so that you can pay in any currency you wish – if paying by Paypal or Credit Card – looking at getting that to work for Google Checkout.

So all I can see is please bare with us, we are trying our best and please please email us if you require anything at a certain acceptable price, we will try our best to get what you need.

Thank you for reading

Zack
www.littlediode.com

 

This brings more onto why pricing has turned out to be a difficult process for us, and especially because of ebay and paypal. We are getting hammered out there on ebay if we sell $1000 on average about $300 goes to ebay and paypal. In addition to the high listing fees, we list over 35,000 components on ebay – average listing fee per item $0.05, every MONTH, if we sell or we don’t sell anything, we pay the listing fees.

Well that is the price you pay for usage of ebay, which opens up your markets to many times the size it would be any other way. It has also reduced the barriers-of-entry for your business into such a market.

At least it is nice that you have taken the time to put some of this in context.

Dave