On Wednesday 14 May 2008 20:07, Eric Smith wrote:
Dan wrote:
Thanks for the headsup.
I sent them a RFQ for a price.
Let us know if you get a reply. In my experience chip brokers won't
bother to reply even if you're offering $250 per line item
(e.g., 25 pieces at $10 each, or 5 pieces at $50 each).
The other thing about chip brokers is that they don't have ANY stock.
All they have is a subscription to some industry database or an
aggregation of databases, such as Loadparts. The database lists parts
that someone else somewhere claims to have. Naturally the broker will
not tell you who actually has the parts, since that would eliminate
their "usefulness" as a middleman.
Perhaps if you buy a Loadparts subscription you can find out who
really has the parts. I'm mildly tempted but haven't needed any
parts desperately enough to spend $150 for a three month subscription
to find out.
Hmmm... if there isn't any bigger entry barrier to becoming a parts
broker than a $50/month database subscription and putting up a cheesy
web site, maybe I should go into that business myself!
I'm probably expecting too much of what the Loadparts subscription
will do, though. It probably will mostly return results from
brokers, and not actually get one any closer to the actual sources.
Eric
If there were some easy way to exclude a lot of that BS from one's searches
that would be a truly useful thing.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin