OT: Generic UK-based electronics NG?

I think a lot of the obsolete chips (>20yo) sold from China are from e-waste. Scrap PCBs from the West are sent over to them, they unsolder all the chips, clean them up and put them in tidy packaging. They don't actually have a way to test them, so they sell them anyway and it's on you to play the lottery as to which are good.

Which is a fine business model as long as you accept that's how it works. (also, the conditions in which such 'recycling' happens can be fairly environmentally awful. I've not seen reports on that from China specifically, but I've seen some bad pictures of lithium battery 'recycling' / remarking which is another thing that happens)

Another scam is just re-marking junk chips to be valuable ones. That's another reason testing is important.

Farnell is better range wise. I'm not sure why they maintain CPC and Farnell as a whole parallel operation with different warehouses, part codes, etc.

(at work we have a contract with Onecall which is one catalogue with CPC and Farnell combined. Parts from both on one order and you get two envelopes arrive, one from each warehouse)

I make heavy use of going into categories and then parametric filtering, rather than searching for words, which are often hit and miss depending on how items are described.

jlcpcb.com is a popular one - $2 for 5 two-layer boards at 100x100mm. More layers and features aren't a lot extra. Delivery on the cheapest tier is usually about a week from shipment.

Theo

If CPC and Farnell are selling the same item CPC is usually quite a lot cheaper. I suppose they hope that the main industrial customers of Farnell don’t notice/can’t be bothered. I guess they created Onecall (for the (higher) education sector) in an attempt to give themselves an edge over RS. CPC is a bit like Plusnet is to BT.

I've just tried to return a faulty item to Farnell, their customer help service is completely broken and they don't even bother to read e-mails. i suspect they have turned the whole thing over to AI and it just keeps going around in circles, sending out the same irelevant standard replies.

When I 'phoned them I was unable to get my complaint referred to management and could not get the idiot girl in an overseas call centre to deviate from her script. She claimed she didn't have a supervisor, so I couldn't be referred onwards.

If they treat other customers this way, they will soon start losing business.

Has Radiospares gone now, or it been consumed. Been retired 25 years so I am slightly out of touch.

RS Components

ok ta.

It's been RS Components since before I retired - and that was 28 years ago. The website is still there.

No liz, its only you...:-)

My uncle had an account with Radiospares, when the catalogue was about

Not if you read Trustpilot. Looks like they’ve shipped their customer service out to Eastern Europe. We’ve had a major order screw up lately.

In article snipped-for-privacy@jrenewsid.jretrading.com>, Joe snipped-for-privacy@jretrading.com scribeth thus

I remember it being around 4 mm or 3/16 think don't bother with the printed cat anymore its all on their website!..

Don't do tuning condensers anymore 'tho they still have the odd valve and base;!

Have you watched the YouTube site "Usagi Electric" ?.

He does stuff like this .

Andrew

There is a guy out on the 'tubes that is trying to build something community wise.

Mend It Mark

Thanks. I'll give it a look.

There's also

VRAT

EEVBLOG