[time-nuts] Prologix USB-GPIB Controller

Chuck Harris cfharris at erols.com
Sun Oct 9 09:49:40 EDT 2016


How do you know the product you "paid more money" for is
not a counterfeit?

The best you can do is to go to a source that you trust,
for some reason, and exercise a right of return.

For instance, I have found counterfeit capacitors in
products from HP (in power supplies).  They looked like
Nichicon, but were a slightly wrong color, and had the
name mispelled Nichicom.  And surprise!  They were bad...

I have also found United "Chemicom" caps in one device.

And I have found counterfeit FTDI USB->RS232 devices in
medical instruments...  I only know of them because of
FTDI's momentary spate of anarchist activity where they
had their windows drivers erase the ID from counterfeit
parts... The equipment they were in was scrapped because
the USB ports failed...  A linux utility that I have
showed me why (lsusb).

As to the LTZ1000 type parts.  These references appear in
many, many places you might not expect.  They are in about
all laboratory precision scales, a lot of medical instruments,
like thermometers, driers, and ovens, and the Chinese know
it.

They take pulls from these obscure sources, weld new full
length leads onto the stubs on the original parts, and
sell them as new.  They probably are good enough for 99%
of the applications where they might get used. aged even.

-Chuck Harris

Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote:

> 
> Like Bob Camp said, it is better to pay more money and get a genuine
> product.
> 
> Dr. David Kirkby Ph.D CEng MIET


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