Hard to find chips?

[nanochess]

Hi.

 

I was thinking that as chips become obsolete them become scarcer, rare and sometimes expensive.

 

Someone here has some experience with strange chips, common-now-scarce chips, too expensive chips or still is looking for chips?

 

Just curiosity

[+5-11under]

Many (all?) of these chips are rare and expensive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEM_and_SSM_chips_in_synthesizers

[CatPix]

Any "home made" chips are doomed to become scarce and hard to find; a good example is the Bally Astrocade, which isn't helped much by the fact that the chips are so prone to fail.

 

There is counter examples, as if you look at the Amstrad CPC, it uses a "gate array" that is custom, tho, it's very reliable (most CPC failures are from faulty RAM) and the CPC is a very common computer, so there isn't much of a shortage of Amstrad gate arrays since there is no demand for it.

[fiddlepaddle]

Pringles are still pretty much just as widely available as ever.

 

Actually, because of advances in semiconductor design, I suspect it will be less and less expensive to create either duplicates, or functional equivalents for pretty much any chip as long as the technical specs are available.

 

Ultimately, the hardest part will be making the physical packaging and assembly, and digital printing should take care of most of that. In a few years, assuming complete technical specs, automated one-off fabrication might cost $10 to $20 per chip, I would guess.

[skosh]

The NES PPU is a perfect example where there is an actual project for an FPGA replacement. http://universalppu.com/.

It is unique as the PPU has many versions between the console and arcade machines and serves to aid owners of arcade boards a replacement chip as well as console owners who'd like the ability to output RGB.

 

I'd imagine that the same could be accomplished for the Astrocade and would be welcome for sure.

[nanochess]

I never heard until today of CEM and SSM chips. Interesting!

 

And this remembers me that my Timex Sinclair TS1000 has a broken ULA, and the only way is to get it from another TS1000.

Edited September 20, 2013 by nanochess

[+5-11under]

ULA can be replaced with an FPGA, I think.

[CatPix]

Indeed. Latest ULA on the Amstrad CPC were ASIC chips.