Just ran across an interesting oddity --
I ordered a few 7475s to replace the ones with corroded legs on my
Imlac's memory control boards; upon replacement I note a dead short
between 5V and GND (as evidenced by the 5V supply being drawn down to
1.5V or so on powerup). After pulling the chip out, it's pretty clear
that pin 5 (VCC) is shorted to pin 12 (GND), as are pins 4 and 13.
Verrry odd. I grab the other replacements I ordered and they test the
same way.
My curiosity getting the better of me, I break the top off the chip (not
entirely successfully). You can see the results here:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/imlac/fake7475.jpg
The picture's not great, but you can see that pins 4,5,12, and 13 are
connected to asolid piece of metal! There does appear to be adie in the
chip, interestingly enough(not pictured). Defective chip? Other chip
relabeled to be a 7475? Who knows...
Unfortunately, I can't find the invoice for these items (I ordered these
a couple of months back), so I don't know where it came from; it was
probably either Jameco or Digi-Key...
Ugh, I wonder how many others of these chips I ordered are fakes...
- Josh