IC Supplier with Free / Cheap Shipping?

IC Supplier with Free / Cheap Shipping?
by qbradq on 2011-06-06 (#79324)

Hey all, I am trying to find a supplier of single-quantity ICs and other components that offers free or low-cost shipping options.

It's a hard sell to the better half when I want to order 90 cents worth of IC's from Mouser and have to pay a $10 shipping fee. I end up trying to wait until I have a bigger order, but that usually means that small projects I want to fiddle around with never get done.

So far I've found aliexpress.com but I have had very little luck finding suppliers within North America with low-cost shipping. Free shipping does me little good when it takes a month

I have also had some minor success with eBay. I managed to find a lot of 10 of the shift registers I need for my ROM programmer for $3 with free shipping from the US (so no 30-day wait

). The only problem with eBay is trying to find slightly less common parts, like a 74670 register file.

DigiKey has a USPS Priority Mail option that is under $3 for light packages, however their selection is not terribly great for through-hole components and their prices seem to be worse than many other online retailers.

Mouser and Jameco do not appear to have shipping options under $8, and Futurlec is much worse ($11 minimum).

Any other options ya'll have?

by chykn on 2011-06-06 (#79332)

I ran into the same problem when I was working on the AVR serial adapter for the NES last year. The lesson I learned? Bite the bullet and order a variety of parts to justify the shipping. You'll thank yourself in the long run. I would start working on a project then find that I was missing one or two critical components that were relatively common (0.1uF caps, 10uF caps, 10k ohm resistors, logic gates, etc) but I'd only ordered what I thought I needed at the time.

When I placed my last order I pulled up the 74 series chip list and started adding anything I thought might be useful in future projects. Shift registers, buffers, latches, magnitude comparators (for address decoding) and basic gates. Also went through a few possible project schematics and added all the resistor and capacitor values that were referenced. I ended up spending nearly $50 including shipping, but since then I've been able to build a number of boards without waiting 5 days for a 5 cent part.

On a side note, I order from Mouser because, unlike Digikey, they don't collect sales tax if you're out of state.

by TmEE on 2011-06-08 (#79430)

I do what chykn does, buy lot of parts I might need at once.

Re: IC Supplier with Free / Cheap Shipping?
by infiniteneslives on 2011-06-08 (#79431)

qbradq wrote:
DigiKey has a USPS Priority Mail option that is under $3 for light packages, however their selection is not terribly great for through-hole components and their prices seem to be worse than many other online retailers.

I'm suprised your having those issues with Digikey. It's been awhile since I've price compared them but usually their selection (including through hole) makes them top choice for me. They are best for shipping as far as I've seen.

I like to use Jameco when I can also.

by qbradq on 2011-06-27 (#80622)

Just thought I'd mention that Futurlec has come down quite a bit on their shipping costs. They are now only charging $4 for orders up to $29 USD.

by FARID on 2011-06-27 (#80629)

Please tell me your idea about these prices :

From :
www.hitech-ic.com
jamby@hitech-ic.com

by qbradq on 2011-06-27 (#80631)

Those are decent prices for the Flash ROMs. I don't know what the others are.

by Memblers on 2011-06-27 (#80648)

Prices sound good to me. Definitely let us know how these parts work, I mentioned before I ordered AX5202Ps (about the same price) and a number of them were defective. Hopefully these are from a better quality batch. I can take a picture of the marking on the chips for comparison later, if you want.

I knew the part number for UM6527 and UM6528 (CPU and PPU), but I didn't know the part number of UM6561 (NES on a chip). That's great that it's available in QFP. Not sure how I would get the pinout for it though, without a system that uses it.

qbradq: BTW, ax5202p is an MMC3 clone, and UM6582 seems to be is the parallel-serial chip for some Famiclone controllers.

by qbradq on 2011-06-27 (#80656)

Well this all confirms my suspicions that FARAD is working on an Iranian Famiclone

by SkinnyV on 2011-06-27 (#80664)

Farid is working on a Kunio Kun multicart in Farsi. I think when he'll succeed, I'll celebrate with him and play all of them in Farsi lol As for the part, let us know how it turn out, I usually whine about getting part because of shipping and I'm only in Canada so I can imagine how it could be in Iran...

by tepples on 2011-06-27 (#80669)

How come you're always such a fussy young man?
Don't want no Cap'n Crunch, don't want no Raisin Bran
Well don't you know that other kids are starving in Iran
So EAT IT

(Sorry, couldn't resist. The country mentioned in the song has developed rapidly since the song came out, and Weird Al has a new album out.)

Good luck with your TV game, Farid.

by FARID on 2011-06-27 (#80671)

Quote:
I can take a picture of the marking on the chips for comparison later, if you want

Ok, I can take a picture too

Quote:
Not sure how I would get the pinout for it though

UM6561 NOAC pinout

Quote:
Well this all confirms my suspicions that FARAD is working on an Iranian Famiclone

I am working on everything about Famicom and NES, I want to learn as much as possible, I have strong feeling about it.

@SkinnyV
I appreciate you. You are giving me more spirit

@tepples
I can't understand your post, what do you mean?!

by infiniteneslives on 2011-06-27 (#80675)

This is AWESOME that these chips are available. CPU, PPU, NOAC, MMC3 seriously?!?! Anyone know of what differences there may be? I guess the NOAC is a dendy, but I can forgive that with some region work arounds...

I WANT some. I don't know what I'm going to do with them right now but this is great.

I almost want to invest in large quantities of these (100's) for safe keeping or future use/distribution. I'm kind of confused on where to find the stuff on the site though. Does everything have to be requested via email? Do they have the UM6527 and UM6528 (CPU and PPU) or do you just know of the part numbers Memblers?

I know it doesn't help you much FARID and I'm not sure what the difference may be with the specific FC controllers. But just to share with those unaware the controller shift registers in the standard NES and SNES controllers aren't anything special, Ben heck approved: http://benheck.com/book/FAQ_Errors.htm#4-a
Digikey part: 296-2040-5-ND http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=296-2040-5-ND

As far as tepples joke goes FARID this may help:
Weird Al's version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI
In case you're unfamiliar with Michael Jackson's original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRdxUFDoQe0

by Memblers on 2011-06-27 (#80676)

Considering that most Famiclones I'd seen had bad sound (wrong duty cycles), I'd venture a guess that it may be this one. I have an old clone that has 6527/6528 (not sure if it's those exactly, haven't looked inside it in years and I know it's a PAL console). That one seemed accurate enough, not that I tested it to a great degree though. Probably were exact copies of the chips.

When I bought those AX5202s, I found them through http://digchip.com/. My RFQ got a response from maybe 6 distributors that apparently had it. In fact, I remember searching on that site and finding places that claimed to even have RP2A03G, 2C02s, about anything. Doesn't seem like you could just buy those that easily, but I suppose it's not beyond belief.

If they'll work with you to make sure you don't get a load of defect chips is what I don't know, the ones I got seemed to be mostly bad but I didn't want to sit there and test them all.

I would probably go for some of those UM6561's myself, if they're the real deal. Even with the messed-up sound, that's pretty damn cool (probably wouldn't be hard to patch games to fix the sound).

by infiniteneslives on 2011-06-27 (#80678)

Do you know of any data sheets or anything on the AX5202s? Those and the NOACs are probably the most useful. Especially for repros on the MMC3 to stop slaughtering games. Capable enough CLPDs seem too expensive and way too many pins making then overkill...

The NOACs would be cool to play around with but you've always got the clones in a finished package. It would be cool to make your own clone with those NOACs but but not much real use to the DEV community.

Thanks for the heads up on the lot of bad chis though. That would definitely be a bummer if you didn't plan for it.

by Memblers on 2011-06-27 (#80679)

ax5202 pinout is here, there is no datasheet that I'm aware of:
http://nintendoallstars.w.interia.pl/romlab/pmmc3.htm

I wanted to make a board for it originally, but if the defect rate continued from what I sampled, then it's more like a $10 chip, more than a CPLD would cost. I wondered if I could even make my money back on them at that price, heh.

by infiniteneslives on 2011-06-28 (#80681)

Yeah that really hurts.

Nice thing about the CPLDs is you could use them for multiple mappers and their variants. So you could more safely buy at larger quantities. I don't really have any plans to use something like this in the near future, hopefully the price and pinout options will be a different story by the time I would ever really want them.

by tepples on 2011-06-28 (#80688)

infiniteneslives wrote:
Nice thing about the CPLDs is you could use them for multiple mappers and their variants.

That and you could make cut-down versions of the mappers on smaller CPLDs for games not needing all features, such as fewer CHR banks for those games using CHR RAM on a mapper that also supports CHR ROM.