Peter,

I'll look at segor.de - thanks

The "shortage" appears to be mostly unique to U.S. suppliers. I'm ready to import chips.

Getting even with bad distributors:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Monday I represented my company at a focus group on the subject of distributors. This was funded by one of the big component distributor in a very nice marketing research facility - studio/two-way mirrors/etc. It was great - I was fed and paid $200 to gripe about lousy distributor performance. :)

We roasted the current state of ditributors and mostly agreed that we'd rather see the component manufacturers go online and cut distributors out.

Everyone there had the same problem getting parts for FLASH anything.

Here's my fun recent experience with ARROW :

(1) Requested of ARROW's page if they had qty on 89C52 models we use in quantity to 500 to 1000. (We have reels of OTP but want to use FLASH on a new product release.)

(2) They responded they could send them IMMEDIATELY that day.

(3) Well this is WONDERFUL news! I sent a quote request to make it official so I could buy them. I even sent along a partial BOM to sweeten the deal.

(4) 10 days later - still no reply. I phoned and my rep said, "Oh! I didn't see that, please email it again".

(5) I sent it again and my Rep said that he re-directed it to another sales rep. (we figured he redirected it to avoid admitting he wouldn't ship us any after all and the delaying tactic was to wear us down for eventual bad news from the new-guy.

(6) 10 days later - still no reply.

(7) Contacted the "re-directed sales rep" and he said, "Oh! I haven't done that yet - I've been busy answering the phone. (probably from other aggitated customers who aren't getting servie from ARROW"

(8) 10 days later - still no reply. I went to the Distribution focus group probably financed by ARROW and mntioned the two salesreps pathetic performance complete with their names.

(9) 2 days later - still no reply. Time to call a few Ninja buddies.

-Jay C. Box