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New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

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Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#31
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It annoys me too but part numbers are not a spec but more of a strong hint. The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Even for a 2N2222 or whatever.

> The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Is this backed up by court precedent? This seems like you could easily claim damages due to a differently speccd part. I’m not doubting that’s how the industry operates, but it seems wrong so I’m curious what is supporting such a dysfunctional form of doing business.

It has worked this way since the days of the vacuum tube, so there probably is some legal precedence somewhere. I think part of this with the NE5532 is just that these days most EEs spend most of their time with digital where the data sheet and its spec is absolute; in the linear world the spec sheet is an ideal and an average because the parts themselves are an ideal and the real world never lines up with the math. Back when the NE5532 came out it was still common to see power supplies that were unregulated or barely regulated or cheap regulators with poor tolerance that would vary a fair amount with wall voltage and massive tolerances on passives, data sheets and EEs took this into account, most parts would survive max voltage but there would be a higher failure rate, so run at 70% or 80% and you don't have to worry about it.

In these days of cheap SMPS and EEs that are trained with a strong lean towards digital and much improved IC fab, the max seems to be treated as the max safe voltage for good reliability and life, and you don't have to worry much about the tolerances of everything else so much. Back in the 90s when I was learning this stuff, the old EEs scolded me when ever I ran at max voltage and would patiently explain it all to me and that even if it can operate at that voltage, you can't be certain your PS will still be putting out that voltage in a year, parts drift as they age and accidents happen and the world is not ideal. They were right.

Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see both sides of this. I really want different part numbers for the same reason you do. However we deal with a lot of regulated products and to just open a case at one of the Government Paper-Pusher Regulators will cost us $5,000 to just change the part number. We are a small company and $5k hurts.

... How do the "paper-pusher regulators" feel about getting a completely different part unannounced? I would guess unhappy, tbh. Like based on the thread it's not trivial changes.

Kind of like keeping a certain plane model number the same, and claiming that re-training isn't needed even when it clearly is

Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#33
post #30

Oh, wow, I was expecting from the title that, eh, maybe they changed the process or something, and someone was being a bit fussy. But yeah, no, different part.

Across the board TI is moving to new fabs, new fab processes and 300 mm wafers. So the old tooling is going away and they're adapting legacy designs to the new processes. This changes component behavior, particularly analog stuff, like these op amps. That's all inevitable and has happened in the semiconductor business before. When it happens, manufacturers are forced to choose; obsolete old parts that can't be indist…

> so they can keep booking orders from high volume customers without disruption.

Clearly there is disruption though. It's more a matter of whether or not it's openly acknowledged.

Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#34
EEVblog 1752 - Texas Instruments SCREWED UP the NE5532!

https://youtu.be/22ZmmZ67SMY

----

Summary of changes:

- Input stage changed from NPN to PNP

- Slew rate decreased from 9V/µs to 5V/µs

- Supply voltages absolute ratings decreased from ±22V to ±18V

Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#36
An amusing aside: Look at the list of "applications." Netbooks? Multichannel video transcoders? Scalable platforms?

I've seen this in other TI datasheets. One old general purpose 74HC series logic chip included "E Meters" in its applications.

My hunch is that whoever was assigned to add these "applications" to each data sheet was having some harmless fun.

Another note is that I'm a low profile customer of Digi-Key and Mouser. Both of them send out change notifications on parts that I've ordered in the past.

Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#37
post #7
post #4

This sort of thing really annoys me. Part numbers are for use of engineers, not for the marketing dept. If you change the specs, change the part number.

It annoys me too but part numbers are not a spec but more of a strong hint. The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Even for a 2N2222 or whatever.

Specs are just that... specs. A 7400 is one thing, but if you designed a circuit that barely avoids oscillating with a 10 MHz GBW, an unsolicited "upgrade" to the opamp that raises its GBW to 12 MHz may be more of a disaster than a favor.

Frankly it's not OK to "upgrade" plain old TTL parts, either, since a faster 7400 might expose a race condition that never caused problems before, or cause EMI problems that didn't exist before.

Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#38

This is the electronics equivalent of Python3's breaking changes to string handling. It's pure evil, and will have 2nd order effects for decades.

How were they python 3 changes pure evil? I think it was a good thing for the language in the long run, and the earlier you do it, the better.

Re: New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

#40

This is the electronics equivalent of Python3's breaking changes to string handling. It's pure evil, and will have 2nd order effects for decades.

Because unicode and f-string replacements in an open source project are the devil and have completely similar parallels to a proprietary hardware chiplet being altered without any recourse? Axe grind me harder daddy.
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