On Oct 1, 3:51*pm, Jon Elson wrote:
On 09/29/2010 09:23 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:



* * I've been looking for some Panasonic FM series low ESR caps. Digikey
showed a 25 week leadtime. *I don't need them next year.

Yeah, i just placed an order for a Hall-effect current sensor. *I
usually run into a lead time on those, but got 25+ weeks from all the
distributors. *Fortunately, there was an outfit that had a few and was
searchable on the Google.

This is the new way, and those of us in the US are going to have to
get used to it. *Never design a board until the parts are in your hands,
never order more boards than you have parts for, etc. *I have had many
commodity parts like voltage regulators become obsolete, now I am
pretty paranoid about second-sourcing of everything.

Jon

This is really nothing new. We had problems like this in the early
1980s when many 74LS series logic parts were on allocation from
distributors. We ended up buying production quantities, ten pieces per
order, from hobby supppliers.

Another time, in the mid 1980s (I think) you couldn't buy, for love or
money, a 7805 regulator. That's like the grocery store being out of
salt.

And doesn't it suck when a part goes from "in stock" to unobtainium
after you've tested the prototype boards and the production boards are
on order?

Blame it all on "Just In Time." Nobody wants to keep anything in
stock. And this has been, like I said, going on for a long time.