Re: RANT - Buying online from Maxims Website From Hell

From: Bob Stephens (stephensyomamadigital_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 11/24/04 

Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:07:02 GMT

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:36:34 -0000, john jardine wrote:

> "Boris Mohar" <borism_-void-_@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:afc7q0lfs9phhs1v3l4cqocruvkurusel5@4ax.com...
>>
>> This website from hell does not reflect the rest the company. It has to
> be
>> most un intuitive HTML construct on Internet.
>>
>> Small example - I entered quantity of 25 pc for two items in the order
> basket
>> and submitted it. After some lengthy pondering it came back with the
> first
>> item quantity reset to 1pc. I tried to change it back to 25 and did not
>> succeed until I changed the delivery date by one day. (the item was in
> stock)
>> Last time it happened, I missed it and actually got one chip delivered to
>> me. After finally convincing the beast that I really want 25 pc of each I
>> proceeded with the order, submitted my Visa number and got the following
>> message after a lengthy pause:
>>
>> Internal Server Error
>> The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was
> unable
>> to complete your request.
>> Please contact the server administrator, ecomaxim@maximhq.com and inform
> them
>> of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may
>> have caused the error.
>> More information about this error may be available in the server error
> log.
>>
>> "anything you might have done that may have caused the error" is the part
>> that pisses me off. This happened twice today. It was admitted to me by
>> several of Maxim staff that the online buying server is quirky and that
> they
>> are working on it. That was more that two years ago.
>>
>> After informing them of my woes I got an email saying:
>>
>> "We apologize for the error. Does the credit card billing address and
>> shipping address match? If not, they need to match."
>>
>> I use only one address but I fail to see why I could not have different
>> billing and shipping address.
>>
>> Of curse when it all gets resolved they will ship by UPS, but that is
> another
>> story.
>>
>> Does anyone else share similar experience?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Boris Mohar
>>
>> Viatrack Printed Circuit Designs
>>
>>
>
> Yes. Couple of week ago, to pursue an idea, I tried to buy 2 of the newish
> AD9833 DDS chips. After much buggering about, seemed best solution was to
> just request as samples from AD. Never requested samples before but guys
> here seem to get 'em no problem, so gave it a try from the AD website.
> After a lot of farting about with emails and then secure passwords and
> secure this that and the other. I finally got to the page. It kept sending
> me round in circles and resetting the sample quantity to "1" finally got a
> "2" in and somehow managed to escape
> No sight nor sound from AD since.
> Who else makes DDS chips?.
> regards
> john

I had no problem ordering them from stock at Digikey (US). No evaluation
boards available though - even from AD.

BTW I stumbled on someting they don't mention in the data ***.

They claim that "...NCOs inherently generate continuous phase signals, thus
avoiding any output discontinuity when switching between frequencies."

Well, I'm using this chip as a swept sinewave generator, and unless you
handle it right it's discontinuous as hell. Merely updating the frequency
register does not update the output synchronously. There is a settling time
where the output waveform is unstable. The workaround for this is to enable
frequency register 0 with the starting frequency, preload frequency
register1 with the next value and flip the frequency0/1 enable bit, load
the next value into frequency0, toggle the bit etc.

Bob