DEC bus transceivers

Re: DEC bus transceivers Well, that's over almost 30 years - and your total from that period is about 4% of the remaining stock (and in a commercial operation, to boot, not hobbyist)... Sure, but try looking at it from our perspective: we either use an out-of-production part, or have to design something (almost certainly from discretes) that meets those specs; and we actually looked at the latter (viz. Dave B's design). However, after some pondering, and taking everything (including all the below) into account, we decided to go with the original chips, since they were still sorta available. Which is why both we and Guy have stocked up on them, at the start of the process: we don't want to crank out boards designed for a certain part, and then not be able to get the out-of-production parts the boards were designed to use. If we were designing something for serious production, that wouldn't be an option, but for limited-volume hobbyist use, it is. The choice of an out-of-production part does have a down-side, but it's minor (and mostly alleviated by the pre-buying), and the other options were (in overall sum) worse. But, but... I'm _already_ buying them from unreliable sources, then testing them! :-) But to be serious - if the demand for QSIC's, etc, runs the well of DS8641's dry, yes, we'll probably have to re-design. In other words, we'd be right where we'd be today if we decided not to use out-out-production parts. Noel