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040 are kinda pricey but once recycled aren't an option or if you're worried about getting dodgy chips it's reasonable

27C020 are good though, I seem to be needing these a lot lately and never have spares

Do they do larger stuff? 080/160/322?
 
I looked into going with new OTPs a while back but they're so much more expensive than the used stuff. even if 2/3rds of the used chips you get from china are bad it's still cheaper than buying new OTPs most of the time.
 
I've found the same. Particularly since the seller I've been buying from for the past year or two has been pretty reliable. Out of all the chips I've ordered I've only had 2 or 3 failures

If 1mbit EPROMs become a problem I have a fairly large amount (500+) of NOS 27C010/1001 :D
 
I've got lots of eproms also. Worst so far were the 27c800s. Large failure rate. 27c160 maybe one bad in every 8.

If you watch some videos of how tech recyclers in China remove chips you can see how so many can become bad. We saw one video where a lady was using her barbecue to remove the chips.
 
I had a whole batch of 160s seem fine. Burned fine. Validated fine. But they actually were faulty or counterfeit, likely slow but I never removed paint to see. Maybe I can dig one up.

But it caused me a lot of pain... two tmnt2 conversions where I the audio was super noisy in samples, and an osman conversion where the video showed noise too. It was wild seeing how a bad/counterfeit chip manifested itself.

GFX Noise on an Osman [fixed]
 
I had the same issue with TMNT2 conversion believe it or not. Super scratchy sound. Burned another eprom from the same batch and worked. Had to do it twice with two conversions.
 
I don't use 160s a lot so maybe that's why. 801s I've ordered in the past have been ok but I had a couple of faulty Wolf Unit boards I pulled the EPROMs off that have sufficed for those for a while.

The main EPROMs I seem to need to order are 040s and 322s
 
These dodgy chips can be board killers, and time wasters! As a rule, if it's got tinned legs, avoid on ANY IC unless you pulled it from a scarp board yourself!!
There's loads of videos of the 'refurbish' process, Belt sanders, BBQ pcb's stacks of boards in the rain that are all faulty anyway and that's before painting and passing it off as something better.
 
There's loads of videos of the 'refurbish' process, Belt sanders, BBQ pcb's stacks of boards in the rain that are all faulty anyway and that's before painting and passing it off as something better.
I'd love to see that, do you have links to any of these videos?
 
There's a couple here but they are quite 'tame' compared to some i've seen. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjuabaERBSDwvUb1wW79MEw

The one that put me off totally can't find at the moment but it showed the whole process, about 10 mins long it may of been deleted.
These kind of 'behind the scenes' videos get deleted because they have things like child labor and shit going on in them too but i'm sure a bit of google you will find some of the worse videos.
 
That's a pretty interesting process, and I do like the fact that they're recycling what would otherwise end up in a landfill.

however, it would be nice if they were marked/sold as "refurbished" and maybe put through some level of QC before being resold.
 
That's a pretty interesting process, and I do like the fact that they're recycling what would otherwise end up in a landfill.

however, it would be nice if they were marked/sold as "refurbished" and maybe put through some level of QC before being resold.
They are not refurbished tho, they are a gamble.
Giving an eprom a lick of paint and calling it something faster / better is not refurbishing it (it's not a fence or a coffee table!)

They should sell the parts as originally marked and as a gamble. the more they mess with em' the worse they get.
 
Sometimes you can tell if they are fake by pictures. A lot of times the date code they print is actually from after the manufacturer stopped making the part.....
 
QC will be difficult. The sellers on ebay just buy big lots from recyclers. The recyclers are just buying what poor people digging through trash and pulling ICs in any way possible are bringing to them. I guess the burden should be on the recyclers but good luck with that. Problem is that though many fail the IC ID test of programmers which is a great indication of some issue with the IC, many test, erase, and program ok but don't work correctly during use.

I'd rather buy a bulk lot of untested, unpainted chips with 50% failure for a good price than a lot of 10 that is marketed as one thing and turns out to be another.
 
I can actually appreciate the fact that they do bother to refurbish (clean, recoat, repaint, new markings) - but it's a shame they cheat and mark them as other stuff instead of just redoing the original markings or at least the same product code.
 
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