[HN Gopher] Fake chips, I got stung
___________________________________________________________________
Fake chips, I got stung
Author : tosh
Score : 184 points
Date : 2023-12-07 15:13 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (linuxjedi.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (linuxjedi.co.uk)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Anyone take a crack at the underside characters on the
| counterfeit chip?
| jstanley wrote:
| I tried drawing it in https://www.qhanzi.com/ and it looks a
| bit like Fang which apparently means "defend".
|
| Or maybe more like Ruan which means "Ruan" (maybe that's a
| person's name?).
| dmurray wrote:
| Checked with a Chinese native speaker who also thinks it's
| Ruan .
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Ah! Thanks. I tried several different visual search methods
| whilst writing those post but was coming up blank.
| libreliu wrote:
| I think it goes to "Xian ". As a native speaker I think
| "Ruan "'s possible but unlikely, since most people will
| write the "Fu " part more straight.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| I don't know Chinese but Google translate says "Xian "
| means "virtuous", "worthy", or "able".
|
| Is that word plausibly used to refer to devices to mean
| "it works" or "it passes tests"?
| mook wrote:
| It's more likely to be the name of the QA person that
| checked it. Writing a literal "OK" is so much easier if
| they just wanted it mark it as good otherwise.
| pringk02 wrote:
| I'm stumped. I've never been good with handwritten Chinese, but
| even rotating it I can't match it to any valid character. The
| closest I got was Qu which means "to surround"
| otteromkram wrote:
| Did you try viewing it in a mirror? Sometimes that helps.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I was wondering if it could be Devanagari or something similar
| based on that strong horizontal line.
| netruk44 wrote:
| I thought I'd check with GPT-4 vision preview just to see what
| it could make of the character. Unfortunately, it couldn't
| figure it out.
|
| > The logographic character you're referring to appears to be a
| Chinese character, but it's not clearly written which makes it
| difficult to identify with certainty.
|
| (There was more to the response, but it was more about why the
| character might be written there)
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Yea, I tried a couple of AIs on it whilst writing that post
| and didn't get anywhere. It does look like elsewhere in the
| comments here people have maybe figured it out though.
| libreliu wrote:
| As a native speaker I think its "Xian ", just rotated right by
| 90 degree.
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Many thanks, I'll update the post later tonight with the
| findings from the comments here.
| nneonneo wrote:
| Yes, I agree. Looks exactly like Xian . The irony is that
| this character means "virtuous, worthy, good; able", but
| you've received a rather un-virtuous counterfeit chip.
| bogantech wrote:
| If I needed to replace a 65C02 I'd buy a WDC 65C02 new from
| mouser - they're still made today :)
| bonzini wrote:
| Last paragraph: "As a side note, I have designed a prototype
| board that allows use of a brand new 65C02 IC made by Western
| Digital in retro machines. The Western Digital chips have a
| slightly different pinout to the others, so need a slight
| conversion. PCBs for this are coming soon."
| bogantech wrote:
| Thanks I have no idea how I missed that :/
| akino_germany wrote:
| But the WDC chips are made by Western Design Center, not
| Western Digital Corporation.
| guerrilla wrote:
| So many people get this wrong. I've seen this mistake
| everywhere.
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Doh! That's what I get for writing with a stack of hard
| drives next to me. Thanks, I'll update the post.
| satiated_grue wrote:
| WDC application note on that (note the pinout differences):
|
| AN-002: Replacement Notes for Obsolete Versions of 6502 8-bit
| Microprocessors
| https://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/AN-002_W65C02S_Repla...
| no_time wrote:
| That's crazy. I wonder how many chips can they sell these
| years.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Another comment on this post: "I regularly get fake NXP chips
| even from the big distributors. Not going to name them here,
| but it happened at least with the ones starting with A, D and
| M. ..."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38559112
| cglace wrote:
| I once interviewed a candidate who had previously worked for the
| DoD as an engineer that validated components. I was blown away by
| how far they went to ensure the components they received were
| genuine and 100% matched the specs in their contract.
| baz00 wrote:
| Yeah I did 6 months on a goods in line. We measured every
| single part and did full sampled testing. This was on defence
| grade parts as well from big vendors. They were rebagged, kept
| in stores ready for use so there were no surprises.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Why is the defence industry so much more intense when it
| comes to checking parts? Is it mostly because it may be years
| or decades between purchase and usage?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Partly that. Also they tend to push parts farther -
| temperature range, probably also radiation hardness, maybe
| some other things. When you need a part with a milspec
| temperature range, you really want to get a part with that
| range, not a part with a smaller range with a forged label.
| doikor wrote:
| A lot of the environment stuff is more about actually
| testing that the part can take that.
|
| A civilian part might be very close (or the exact same
| part with a different model number) and even better in
| some cases but as it was never tested you don't know.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Because you could defeat your enemy if you sabotaged their
| components! Say you were selling op-amps or oscillators you
| knew were going to be used in warfare. You could burn in an
| "easter egg" where they shut down if they received a
| particular RF pulse (or drifted wildly if they _didn 't_
| receive some covert 'keep working' message). It would be a
| disaster.
| barelyauser wrote:
| Because when you under deliver on a government contract
| they can throw your ass into jail faster than you can say
| "Quidditch".
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Probably because the brass knows what they're doing to the
| other guys' parts, and doesn't want it done back
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Some good answers here, but at the end of the day it's
| this:
|
| If the components don't work in a military situation,
| people might very well die. Sometimes a lot of people.
|
| A counterfeit microprocessor in a dollar store Furby clone
| probably isn't going to kill anyone if it fails. The same
| microprocessor in a surface-to-air missile? Well...
| polishdude20 wrote:
| >The same microprocessor
|
| I knew Furbies had the same killing brains of missiles!
| It's in the eyes.
| sterlind wrote:
| that's the plot of Home Alone 2 if memory serves (except
| with an RC car instead of a Furbie.)
| lawlessone wrote:
| No Home Alone 2 is kid is lost in New York and a forced
| cameo with Trump.
|
| You are thinking of Home Alone 3 which is a cynical money
| grabbing shadow of the original two films.
|
| Personally small soldiers is my favorite missile chip in
| toy genre movie.
| kemotep wrote:
| Home Alone 2 is set in New York. You are thinking of one
| of the later sequels that didn't have Macauley Culkin.
| toast0 wrote:
| > If the components don't work in a military situation,
| people might very well die. Sometimes a lot of people.
|
| Sure, but if the components do work, people might very
| well die. Sometimes a lot of people. Probably different
| people.
|
| Military (and aviation) want uniform, reliable parts and
| to be able to do post mortem investigation of failures
| where they lessons learned can be applied to the
| installed base and future production.
|
| You can't do that very well when you don't even know who
| made your ICs to ask them what happened during production
| or to improve their processes.
| hkgjjgjfjfjfjf wrote:
| > If the components don't work in a military situation,
| people might very well die. Sometimes a lot of people.
|
| TBF, that's also true if they do work.
| awjlogan wrote:
| Money, time, and perceived/realised risk of failure (to
| both the end user, and the supplier). Any time you have
| enough of those, the scrutiny will increase.
|
| If you're making a chicken feeder IoT device, the amount of
| marginal QA cost you can tolerate is low (in fact, you're
| probably tempted to use the counterfeits...) and the only
| adverse outcome is a slightly hungry chicken. Medical
| devices have a much higher risk, but not as much money or
| time as military (a bottomless pit of both), so the QA
| level is higher there, but probably not as much as defence.
| _factor wrote:
| Welcome to the world of supply chain poisoning. Go deep
| enough and you uncover local stores near defense companies
| and military bases which are targeted to contain modified
| inventory in the off chance someone buys it from said
| location. You might have some unused phone home chips in
| your coffee machine and not even know it.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I've heard some similarly wild shit on the other side -
| the market for illicit product designs.
|
| There are these boutique one-man contracting shops, which
| are closed most of the time in places like Shanghai and
| Shenzhen. They are contracted to do R&D for
| manufacturers, and deliver on firmware, product design,
| software, etc. but again are one-man shops which are
| closed much of the time.
|
| I am told this is how the pipeline of information works
| between state sponsored cyber attacks on big tech
| companies, and their Chinese competitors.
|
| Talking about Defense contractors, I've heard stories
| from govvies I know about asian dudes following them
| around the DC area, constantly catching them looking over
| their shoulders at coffee shops.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There are these boutique one-man contracting shops,
| which are closed most of the time in places like Shanghai
| and Shenzhen.
|
| That's not just a China thing, nor is it suspicious all
| by itself. I made a good living in the US doing exactly
| the same thing for years.
|
| The specific shops you're talking about may have been
| nefarious (I don't know), but the mere existence of
| private contractors is not inherently suspicious. They're
| pretty common.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Maybe I did not say it plainly enough.
|
| These one man shops deliver to Chinese firms (Like
| Huawei) hardware designs, firmware source and also other
| misc. software. All in one go, on contract under the
| auspice of "outsourcing R&D". Wayyyy too much for one
| person to deliver on, especially for a small office which
| is mostly closed.
|
| I am not sure if I am mixing up anecdotes, but my source
| has mentioned that the materials provided often contain
| the same firmware bugs as a similar competitor's product
| does.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Because they build things that kill people, and you want
| the right people to die.
| Mtinie wrote:
| Sidebar question for you:
|
| What educational background and/or practical experience route
| would someone have to get into the field? Is this a "requires
| electrical||mechanical engineering degree" role or can it be
| learned via apprenticeship?
| cglace wrote:
| The person I interviewed had an MSc in EE.
| nomel wrote:
| Maybe you can't say, but is it safe to assume it's fairly
| easy to "fingerprint" apart? Or, do the counterfeits "get it
| right" enough where deep functional testing is required?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| One time an ADC chip in my Rigol scope died. From the pinout, it
| was clearly a Chinese clone of a TI part. I wanted a replacement
| clone part, but it wasn't available under the clone name, so I
| bought the cheapest most suspicious listing of the TI part that I
| could find, hoping I would get the clone. Unfortunately I got the
| genuine article. So it goes.
| https://goo.gl/photos/dxU3ChWUcvCMDW4N9
|
| Fortunately I was able to make do with the genuine part, though
| not trivially: there was a weird clock termination difference.
| It's never easy, is it?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That's some drop-dead awesome troubleshooting work there.
| Kudos. You are now ready to tackle the boss level: reverse-
| engineer the Maxim trigger chips on the TDS 694C. :)
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Yeah, you never want to find yourself in a "would you like the
| Chinese genuine part or the French knock-off?" kind of
| situation.
| preinheimer wrote:
| This has serious William Gibson cyberpunk vibes to me.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > French knock-off
|
| Don't joke, they exist.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| how about a bin of OTP 4bitters that were apparently all
| already been had or cooked :-(
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| Left: a technical diagram of the setup. :clap
| baz00 wrote:
| This sort of stuff scares me with modern Chinese test gear. I'd
| rather have some rancid old HP or Tek stuff from the 90s and
| keep a couple of parts mules in the cupboard.
| buildbot wrote:
| The lab I worked in during undergrad had a massive pile of
| old scopes and such. One of them was this monstrosity of a
| scope from the 80s (?) that had a built in thermal printer to
| capture the output, and was I think in the 1-2ghz range! I'm
| sure it's still there, working, waiting for the next
| undergrad to need its assistance.
| mips_r4300i wrote:
| Probably an old Lecroy! With the floppy drive next to the
| thermal printer.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| How do you make Google Photos act as a sort-of-blog post?
| jffry wrote:
| When editing an album in Google Photos, there's controls at
| the top right (on desktop browser at least) that let you
| insert text or maps inbetween photos
| genericone wrote:
| Huh, you learn interesting things everyday in unusual
| places. Look forward to seeing more google-photos blog-
| posts from this new discovery. /s I hope.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| That's actually really effective, and refreshingly
| lightweight. It even lets people comment.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I can only imagine your review: "Selected totally dodgy looking
| seller to source fake part disappointed to receive genuine
| item, one star for being unnecessarily honest"
| stavros wrote:
| I love the "I didn't want to buy another expensive $930 scope,
| so I fixed it using plain old elbow grease and $7000 worth of
| expert hardware designer time".
|
| I have also spent thousands of dollars of my time so I wouldn't
| have to replace a $3 part.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Hey, what else would he have been doing with that time?
| Watching Netflix? Fixing the scope sounds way more fun!
| stavros wrote:
| That is very true, I can't count that time as cost, it was
| pure enjoyment.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Peace was never an option!
| mips_r4300i wrote:
| Excellent analysis and fix of the problem! I've found Chinese
| clones are always subtly different than the parts they
| supposedly replace.
| creer wrote:
| > clearly
|
| That was some repair! Bravo! And fantastic write-up - technical
| diagram included.
| baz00 wrote:
| _> This was annoying because the seller is based in the UK and
| claims you should buy from them because you take your chances
| buying from China._
|
| There are a couple of vendors who do this in the UK. They sell
| counterfeit crap while complaining about it loudly. I bet this
| was littlediode. Got into a large argument with them over sending
| out crappy clone / reject bin transistors a few years back.
|
| Edit: at the same time I would like to buy a hell of a lot of
| 2N5458's and relabel them as MPF102's and retire. The MPF102 was
| an unbinned garbage JFET with wide characteristic spread. The
| 5458 is a binned one within the range of an MPF102. Same process.
| Of course though all the crap schematics out there on the
| Internet demand the MPF102 because that's what Radio Shack sold
| and no one knows how to substitute parts!
| anilakar wrote:
| EBay is full of UK sellers who source stuff from China in bulk
| and then pass it off as genuine. This is in no way limited to
| electronic components.
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| It was not littlediode this time, I'm not going to name them
| (you'll be able to tell with a search as the chip has the same
| date code on their auction). There are several out there that
| buy from China and resell. The good ones at least run a barrage
| of tests first.
| baz00 wrote:
| Oooooh them. They always looked suspicious.
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| They were very unhappy with the negative I left. To be
| fair, I have had other things from them in the past that do
| appear to be the real deal.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I've recently been annoyed by "UK sellers" that actually ship
| from China, but using Yodel's "last mile" logistics[1]. They'll
| give you the tracking code for the Yodel part of the journey,
| and it'll take a week longer than the originally advertised,
| but they'll swear they shipped from the UK.
|
| [1] https://www.yodel.co.uk/yodel-services/yodel-uk-
| delivery/int...
| ajb wrote:
| It can't be worth making, or counterfeiting, 6502's for the
| hobbyist market. Anyone have a clue as to what the mass market
| for these chips is?
| bogantech wrote:
| Maybe old industrial systems or something? WDC still
| manufactures them so there must be someone designing new things
| that use these for some reason
| mrWiz wrote:
| I suspect that existing designs are built using them to
| _avoid_ designing something new.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I'm familiar with this one, but there may be others: embedded
| systems. There is a huge market of industrial controllers that
| were designed around the 6502 and for which there is a large,
| solid, existing code base. New designs often use 6502-based
| controllers in order to maintain compatibility with that code
| base, and existing machines need to be able to be repaired.
|
| Fun fact: the ARM is largely based on the 6502. You could argue
| that the 6502 was a RISC chip before RISC was a thing!
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| I've been wanting to squeeze that ARM fact in one of my
| Archimedes blog posts, but somehow never got around to it. It
| is pretty cool how it was developed.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but the 6502
| definitely had some RISC-ish features.
|
| The Page 0 addressing mode basically let you use the first
| page of RAM more or less as 256 extra 8-bit registers (or 128
| 16-bit registers, etc.), as those locations could be accessed
| faster and with fewer instruction bytes than locations
| elsewhere in RAM.
|
| A fair number of languages were implemented on 6502-based
| machines by using multiple Page 0 locations to simulate wider
| registers.
| ojintoad wrote:
| What a fun discussion
| http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?t=720
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Depends on what you call RISC, I guess: many people would
| argue that a load-store architecture is a required part of
| it, and the zero-page is actually an anti-thesis to that.
| In fact, it hints at the possibility of a memory-memory
| architecture (no general-purpose registers, minimal amounts
| of indexing/address registers). Implementations of such
| architecture could, of course, use whatever amount of
| hardware registers (unexposed in the instruction set
| itself) as a memory cache. Throw in some relaxed memory
| model, e.g. other cores don't see the memory stores via
| [STACK_REGISTER+offset] unless an explicit flush command is
| issued, and I imagine the end result will be quite nice to
| both use from the programmer's point of view (no register
| allocation!) and from the implementers point of view as
| well (register allocation is back, but now it's register-
| and memory-renaming, the latter being simplified by the lax
| memory model). One of the downsides is that the instruction
| encoding definitely won't be compact, with all those memory
| offsets instead of register numbers.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I don't know if I'd go quite that far
|
| Well, it is a touch hyperbolic, yes, but the 6502 could at
| least be considered a proto-RISC.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Whoever is counterfeiting these won't just be counterfeiting
| 6502s, they'll be harvesting whatever parts they can find from
| the e-waste they have.
| sixothree wrote:
| Correct. There are counterfeit ROM, RAM, and CPU of all
| varieties out there.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I wonder if it's possible to replace a ton of these really
| old CPUs by a combination of an FPGA, level shifters and a
| flash chip that contains a re-implementation of said CPU in
| FPGA bitstream.
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Oh, absolutely, but it is usually way more expensive than
| buying a load of chips in the chance you'll get a genuine
| one. I work on a project called PiStorm that replaces the
| 68000 series of CPUs using a small FPGA for bus
| translation and a Raspberry Pi.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, it's not only more expensive, but there are other
| considerations, such as power draw, heat generation, etc.
| that may be an issue.
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| I do know the supplier I bought them from bought them in the
| hundreds. I also know I'm the first customer who has noticed
| they are counterfeit. So, there is still enough money there I
| guess.
| II2II wrote:
| These chips are not made. They are relabelled. In this case an
| older, somewhat compatible, and likely lower value chip was
| relabelled as something newer and likely more valuable. I have
| also heard of chips being relabelled as something incompatible,
| so in a sense the author got lucky.
|
| But I suspect you're right if it came to actual manufacturing
| of counterfeits.
| Hasz wrote:
| I had some mosfet gate drivers (IR2112) that were really marked
| as IR2113, a higher tier part. The only real way to tell what
| you've got is to remove most of the epoxy, then boil the rest in
| nitric/sulfuric acid. After much mess and fume, you'll be left
| with the raw die and can inspect the markings. I've done this a
| couple of times, it's quite cool.
|
| In my experience, most "fakes" are crappier parts marked up to be
| better, or chips that have failed QA. Rarely do you get a whole
| clone, although for some very high volume or simple, old parts,
| it's a bit more common.
|
| If you like this, check out
| [zeptobars](https://zeptobars.com/en/), they post high quality
| dieshots, and sometimes fakes.
|
| IR2113/IR2112 die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6DfBuPwAAA
| rcxdude wrote:
| I've heard a story of the opposite, mislabeled from the
| manufacturer themselves! They were pressing the buyer to
| upgrade to a newer, faster MOSFET, but the buyer wasn't
| interested in dealing with going through the EMC compliance
| process again, so wanted the older parts. Eventually the seller
| appeared to relent, and shipped a box of FETs with the older
| label, but lo and behold the assembled boards failed EMC
| testing, and it turned out the manufacturer had just labelled
| their newer parts with the old part number and hoped no-one
| would notice.
| A1kmm wrote:
| > although for some very high volume or simple, old parts, it's
| a bit more common
|
| And often the prevalence of the high volume parts actually
| makes it nearly impossible to find things using the originals.
|
| For example, I once wanted a real FT232 breakout board (or at
| least a clone that can do most of what the original can do) to
| use some of the bit-banging features of the chip. But the most
| popular clones of that chip are very much reduced functionality
| variants that work as a USB-to-UART but don't do most of the
| other functionality. This was probably not helped by the fact
| that the original chips, and early more faithful replicas had
| onboard flash and allowed a degree of programming, but then the
| manufacturer of the original chip embedded malware in their
| Windows driver that detected and wrote bad data to the clones
| flash (which would have broken many products sold to consumers
| with them - technically fixable by removing the driver and re-
| flashing, but probably in most cases just becoming e-waste). So
| the clone manufacturers responded by simplifying: removing the
| flash, and removing most of the programmable functionality, and
| focusing on the UART part that was the most common use case.
|
| Now, no matter how hard you try pre-purchase to make sure
| something is a full FT232 implementation (including asking for
| assurance about the chip up front) on a marketplace like
| Aliexpress or eBay, you are far more likely than not to got a
| limited functionality clone.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| What's a trustworthy shop to buy chips these days?
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| New / old stock? I have a supplier called TV SAT in Poland who
| is pretty reliable. I've had pretty good success with UTSource.
| But it really depends on what you are looking for. Usually it
| is a case of looking at reviews and crossing your fingers.
| sixothree wrote:
| Are they online?
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Both are online, yes (I'm UK based and they ship here).
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Digikey, Mouser, Newark.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Another comment on this post: "I regularly get fake NXP chips
| even from the big distributors. Not going to name them here,
| but it happened at least with the ones starting with A, D and
| M. ..."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38559112
| JohnFen wrote:
| Even if they aren't perfect, they are also not trying to
| defraud anybody. Your odds are much better with them than
| with other random sources.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| So, if these don't meet the standard someone's looking for,
| buying direct from manufacturer is likely the only way.
|
| Note that in some cases like with TI, this is viable, even
| if making small orders.
| Luc wrote:
| A sure telltale is laser writing. You can tell on their second
| example - the writing is sharp and perfect. Often the logo is not
| quite solid color, and you can see it has lines from the laser in
| it. The color of laser-'printed' text is also typical.
|
| The originals often have pretty bad markings on them, actually.
| Off-center, not aligned, not evenly printed. Too perfect is
| suspicious.
|
| Also look at the pins. Sometimes they dip the feet into solder to
| make them look unscratched and shiny. I have avoided buying 'New
| Old Stock' ICs because I could tell the pins had solder on them.
|
| A couple of times I found the IC was of the type advertised
| (after I removed the paint). I guess they just added a fresh coat
| of paint to make them look new!
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| I never thought about inspecting the pins before, a very good
| point.
| peter_retief wrote:
| Friend of mine got a box of plastic chips with no electronics,
| from China.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Why even go to the trouble of actually shipping a product at
| that point?
|
| I'm really surprised by the length people will go to, in order
| to scam others. Someone took the time to do a fake plastic
| chip, or reprint a silk screen on an chip with a matching pin-
| out. My favorites are fake USB drives and "fake" GPUs. The
| amount of time that has to go into finding old GPUs, faking a
| driver and relabeling seems like it would exceed the value of
| the scam, but apparently not.
| peter_retief wrote:
| What I actually thought, they do get to buy some time though.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| If you fail to ship anything, that's an open and close case
| of fraud. If you ship anything, especially if it's at least
| superficially similar, you can argue it was a good-faith
| mistake, just a case of failed due diligence.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, I think that's it.
|
| Also, there's this interesting exchange I had with an eBay
| seller a couple of years ago. I purchased a bunch of NiMH
| batteries. Because I test every component I buy even for my
| hobby projects, I immediately noticed that they were 1/10th
| the capacity that they should have been, and were marked
| as.
|
| I contacted the seller to return them and get a refund.
| They told me "honest mistake" and then began a negotiation.
| "How large of a refund would you accept?"
|
| Since the batteries were useless to me, I said "100%". In
| the end, I did get a complete refund and didn't need to
| return the batteries.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| ^^ This. Simple rule I apply: if you can't trust the
| seller, make sure you can test the parts upon receiving
| them. If sent fakes, make sure to get your money back as
| a matter of principle.
|
| Fun thought: since eBay often rules in favor of buyers,
| it would be fun if someone would 'abuse' this: buy a good
| # of often-faked parts from all sellers that offer them,
| test extensively, and open disputes for any fakes
| received. That should (in theory) cause a good deal of $
| losses for any seller that sold fakes.
|
| Maybe repeat regularly, and it might remove some fakes
| from the market?
| mrweasel wrote:
| That is a bloody technicality if I ever heard one. Someone,
| somewhere still took the time to make these fakes, so
| someone committed fraud regardless.
|
| If you're going to commit fraud, at least be honest about
| it.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| First of all, weight-and-size-accurate dummies (whatever
| they're actually called in English) have legitimate uses.
|
| Second, being honest about commiting fraud is counter-
| productive. Comercial fraud, even though illegal, is
| still a commercial enterprise at its core and its goal is
| the same as of any other comercial enterprise: _to bring
| in profit, the more the better_. Fraud is not about
| sending a message on ethics, or showing off someone 's
| character, or helping the marks to keep their money, it's
| about getting as much money as possible at little cost as
| possible (with the costs of dealing with legal
| persecution accounted).
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| I once ordered a large batch of 64pin DIP sockets from a
| Chinese site and received a piece of ladies' undergarment
| instead. It took a long time to get my money back from that
| transaction.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Did the lady let you keep her undergarment?
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Lol! I had to send it back to China to get my money back
| gnopgnip wrote:
| https://imgur.com/LB9zTFB https://imgur.com/qlPIY4y
|
| They make fake skateboard bearings. These are like 10 cents a
| piece in bulk.
| mrweasel wrote:
| This is what I mean, this product only exits to scam
| people. That has to show that you intent to commit fraud.
| So if the seller is honest, they should report the
| manufacturer, but they don't because the scam is the plan.
| I'm so tired of this crap.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 1. If it's going through a marketplace, having a tracking
| number makes it harder for the customer to get a refund (we
| shipped it; it was delivered!)
|
| 2. If the customer doesn't use the product right away, having
| it look close enough means they might not notice its
| counterfeit until after the N day return window has expired.
| h2odragon wrote:
| early quantum processors. "may de-cohere in shipping"
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| _This was annoying because the seller is based in the UK and
| claims you should buy from them because you take your chances
| buying from China._
|
| There are tons of eBay sellers who bulk buy from China and then
| resell with a huge markup but with the convenience of quicker
| delivery - and the slightly fake sense of being more reliable as
| they are UK based.
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Yep, I was way too trusting this time.
| numlock86 wrote:
| I regularly get fake NXP chips even from the big distributors.
| Not going to name them here, but it happened at least with the
| ones starting with A, D and M. Their excuse is always the same:
| Telling us they just sourced other distributors because of
| shortage at the manufacturer, but won't name these
| "distributors". Really annoying.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Why wouldn't you name them here? People need to know, otherwise
| they will keep doing it yah?
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| People ordering parts would probably be familiar with the
| major sellers like Arrow, Digikey, and Mouser.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Why complain that they won't name the distributors while you
| won't name them?
| sheepshear wrote:
| They're being silly. A, D, and M are as recognizable as
| FAANG.
| whatshisface wrote:
| AMD!
|
| ;)
| piperswe wrote:
| I'm assuming the "D" and "M" are Digikey and Mouser? Rather
| concerning if true.
| swamp40 wrote:
| If you are insinuating Arrow, Digikey, Mouser, we buy NXP from
| all these same sources and have never seen a problem.
|
| They all have traceable lot codes and and entire chains of
| custody that go directly back to the manufacturer. And during
| Covid we were checking.
|
| That traceability is the reason people buy from them instead of
| brokers. If you could prove what you are saying it would be a
| _huge_ scandal.
|
| How do you qualify them as being fakes?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I buy almost exclusively from Mouser and Digikey for this
| exact reason. They are both very active about ensuring that
| what they sell is what they say it is.
|
| I'm sure that even they get scammed from time to time, but
| I've never had a problem with my orders (or at least, none
| that I've noticed). Their prices are higher, but I consider
| their markup well-earned.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Name and shame the bunk seller, warn others. Why no mention of
| the UK seller?
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Just in case the seller becomes litigious. I may be correct,
| but I don't want to spend time proving that in a legal
| framework.
|
| You can easily figure it out as the date code on the chips is
| unique to them and they still sell them on eBay.
| callalex wrote:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/225089488340
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| On this topic, is there anything like a 'chip forensics
| consulting service' out there?
|
| Say if I find a batch from a scalper but I am not sure if it is
| genuine.
| JohnFen wrote:
| If there isn't, there really should be. I bet that would be an
| excellent business to be in.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Once I considered offering such a service for a select few
| parts.
|
| But: shipping, and low $ per part doesn't make it worth the
| effort. If you're buying a $3 cpu it just isn't worth it to
| re-route through a testing service for several additional $
| per pc. + shipping.
|
| Now if talking about say, $100+ / piece parts, sure. But then
| the testing services would have to be extensive,
| professional, and equipped accordingly. Above my pay grade,
| so to speak.
|
| But yes it would be nice if such service(s) existed.
| scottapotamas wrote:
| There are some but vary in how publicly accessible they are.
|
| I haven't used DangerousPrototypes for probably 5+ years, but
| they've got a decapping service that you send parts and they
| send back a die shot.
|
| https://dirtypcbs.com/store/decap
| inasio wrote:
| I now this is hacker news, but for a second I wondered about fake
| chips as in fish and chips
| LinuxJedi wrote:
| Well now I'm just hungry! :)
| callalex wrote:
| The seller is "UK In-Stock Components" I don't understand why the
| author is being so coy about defending a scammer.
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/225089488340
| mschuster91 wrote:
| UK libel laws are insanely strict.
| kazinator wrote:
| Anyone know how I can get in on the fake 65C02 chip action? I
| wanna be rich too!
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