Re: Any Maxim discussion Forum Members?

On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:06:19 -0800 (PST), Winfield Hill
<hill@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Dec 11, 2:34 pm, Rich Grise <r...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:57:13 -0800, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:01:42 -0700, Jim Thompson
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:51:23 -0500, Phil Hobbs
appsma...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
First, let me say that I work at Maxim. The discuss.dalsemi forum
...
Thanks.

Breaking up the discussion into tiny bits like that is a guaranteed way
of squelching it.  You'll get Q&A from customers one on one, but nothing
Phil Hobbs

You know, it's really puzzling.  As you say, "...some really great
parts".  In spite of that, Maxim seems bent on self-destruction :-(
                                       ...Jim Thompson

They're selling stuff and making money. Maybe they treat their volume
customers better than the rest of us.

Of course, they did sample me about 3000 parts once. That was sort of
nice.
John

!. Did the  parts make it into a product?
2. Did they continue to support the part over the life of the product?

Maybe we should take a survey - how many have actually designed a Maxim
part into a product, then suddenly been left "left in the lurch", i.e.,
they dropped it (or dropped support)? IOW, and _specific_ complaints that
affect the bottom line?

Thanks,
Rich

I have left in the lurch - several times, as have friends.
Perhaps we should ask how many engineers have used
a high-performance Maxim part, one not replaceable by
another manufacturer's product, and _not_ had it
discontinued?

Maybe we should say "prematurely" discontinued, but
whenever this has happened, it's been a disaster.

Some manufacturers, like Analog Devices, solve the
discontinued-part issue by make a large quantity of
parts and selling (?) them to Rochester Electronics.
http://www.rocelec.com/ where it seems they can be
purchased for years.

I once had a Maxim opamp suddenly discontinued back in the late 90s. I
think it was the MAX439, a fantastic opamp in the mid 90s. They
switched fab lines and the part was unstable. They claimed the
designer moved to the mountains of Nepal and nobody understood the
design. Fortunately Linear Technology had something that worked almost
as well and they ended up selling $50k more opamps per year. Linear
Tech, on the other hand, provides great customer support, even to us
little guys who purchase less than $100k of their parts per year.

On Maxim's web site, perhaps 5 years ago, they still had a letter from
their president exclaiming that they never discontinued any part. I
wrote the web master and the letter disappeared from their site.

Maxim parts are banned from my designs. Their handling of the MAX439
fiasco and spotty distribution for people who do under $1M business
with them has soured my impression of Maxim. Too bad since they have
some pretty darn nice designs.

---
Mark
.

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