Quote:
Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler
I'm just a little bit fascinated that classic devices whose primary makers were in the US and stopped making them many years ago are still available in quantities, mostly from China.
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Central Semiconductor (USA) based a lot of their business (over the last 35 years or so) on making clones of the classic Motorola RF transistors and selling them to various companies to provide support for legacy products. eg 2N5109, 2N3866 etc etc.
https://www.centralsemi.com/search/s...rchtext=2N3866
So some of these parts will be new parts from Central Semi as they are still making these parts today. However, I'm not sure how much of the process they do themselves. I suspect they buy in the raw materials from fabs around the world and then make the transistors from these materials. But I could be wrong.
As we all know, there will also be copies/fakes available from various companies in Shenzen, China that could turn out to be anything from a hopeless/rebadged fake to something that might work OK.