I thought it might be useful to have a general thread for supply chain observations, as the situation is presently atypical and in flux.

It's not a good time to say "this is expensive" or "this is difficult to find" except in a sense of "at the moment."

I think more than a few project starts, or small production runs, might find parts difficult to find, expensive, or unavailable. There might or might not be substitutions which help out.

Whatever we might say today (or this year) is likely to change in future, as both the manufacturing and the supply chain are disrupted, and that seems likely to continue at least until next year.

And what goes for chips probably goes for dev boards as well.

And the usual warnings apply, for buying old stock or from auction or aggregator sites: you might not get the chip that you ordered, because remarking is rife. The only tool here is reputation, and because of that, you'll almost always get a refund if you complain to the vendor. Do be careful putting an unknown chip into a rare or unique circuit: you might damage something.

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

Two recent cases I've seen discussed: difficulty of getting byte wide EEPROMs, and difficulty getting Raspberry Pi - except for the Pico, which is still very available. Oh, and I think several people have found FPGAs difficult to get.

I think if something is presently available and might be useful in the next year, buying it sooner than later might be a good plan, because there might be stocks but no production.

The sorts of chips we use for serial interfacing, or for SD card control, might be cases in point.

I have read recently that CF disks are hard to find. That is not my experience. Used CFs are readily available on eBay, yes, it is no longer $10 for 10 CF, but $20-$30 for 10 CF is readily available. In general used CFs are trouble free.

The two items I advice against buying on eBay are 6502 and Altera CPLD. If you do, be sure to have working tester on hand to check them out as soon as you received it to take advantage of eBay's excellent return policy.

A flexible tester is good thing to have. TL866II tests many TTL logic, some RAM/EPROM/PAL, but no microprocessors and peripherals. Maybe we should start a thread on used parts testing strategy.
Bill

I planned to write about the chip shortage. We've had a helium shortage for years. Likewise with an avacado shortage. Now the shortages are getting ridiculous. Shipping container shortage. Toilet paper shortage. Used car shortage; partly due to the chip shortage halting car manufacture. GPU prices have gone up to the extent that used parts exceed the official prices of superior models. Furthermore, GPUs with lead are being illegally sold in lead free jurisdictions. There is a fertilizer shortage and a carbon dioxide shortage. And the clown shortage is a particular problem if you require an emotional support clown. Sooner or later, it was going to affect something important. Like chips.

I don't see shortages as a temporary problem. I believe that global supply chains are bifurcating prior to protracted global war. Essentially, where we had one of everything, we now require two of everything - before we blow everything to smithereens and start again.

Arguably, the world runs on Californian technology. Very arguably, this includes x86, MIPS, Alpha, Z80, 8085, 6502, MC68000 variants, ARM, AVR, RISC-V and Xtensa. However, the majority of this technology is now either developed, manufactured or used outside of North America and Europe. This isn't a problem in a time of peace, trade and prosperity. However, some of this technology straddles East and West with, for example, 65816 manufactured exclusively by TSMC. What happens if supply lines fracture? Most obviously, China wants 100% domestic semiconductor manufacturing. At present, China exports low value semiconductors and imports high value semiconductors - disproportionately from TSMC. China could out-spend TSMC on factory construction and generally make all chip production uneconomic. People are concerned about military invasion of Taiwan; possibly while Russia is busy. Semiconductor capacity is aligned with these objectives but it wouldn't significantly affect supply. A greater concern is a "scorched earth" policy where capacity is destroyed. International chaos would be created with 22 of Aardvark's pulse jet engines and thermite EMP with extra copper. Curiously, this is most likely to work if it uses semiconductors for general navigation and image recognition for the final run. Perhaps this is the Fermi filter.

I have further concerns. 600nm (8 bit) chip fabrication is somewhat isolated from 40nm (Raspberry Pi) or <10nm (phone and GPU). However, shortages and substitutions may cause the complete demise of 8 bit ASIC. Unfortunately, 6502 would be affected first due to it being the simplest design. It is possible but not affordable to fit 6502 into 7680 LUT iCE40. However, with a few doublings of Moore's law, this will be a mid-range part. At this point, designs such as Z80 and 8086 will also be affected. What happens if someone has inelastic demand for 8 bit ASIC and only FPGA can be sourced? It'll be more absurd than the Great DRAM Shortage of 1984 because only chips with *more* transistors will be used as a substitute. It'll also be more acute. In 1984, a disproportionate amount of DRAM was used to play Jet Set Willy and not much else.

More mundanely, I've been adversely affected by the chip shortage almost continuously since Sep 2021. It first occurred when I attempted to buy 74AC161 DIP chips so that I could experiment with clock stretching above 30MHz. The dodgy market-places don't have anything alleging to be 74AC161 - yet. After paying for reputable parts, I found that Mouser had no 74AC161 DIP chips for six weeks spanning Oct 2021.

In Dec 2021, Sheep20 waited for a spare Raspberry Pi which, admittedly, hasn't been powered. I'm astounded because a major distributor, like Farnell, had 80000 in stock. That sounds like a huge number but Farnell sold 300-800 per day, so that was optimistically five months of stock. Since then, Farnell had weeks of zero stock.

From Mouser, I'm currently waiting for Aries ZIF sockets (28 pin, 32 pin and 40 pin). Estimated delivery has moved forward to Mar 2022. I'm also waiting for 74HC74 DIP and 74HC574 DIP. Estimated delivery has moved forward to Apr 2022. Other varieties of 74HC DIP seem to be mostly unaffected. Apparently, some of Mouser's suppliers may use a placeholder shipping date of one year in the future. I presume this is a formality to avert breach of contract. The dates are often replaced with a six month wait or less.

During the Dot Com boom, people would boast that their website would crash due to high demand. This is an easy boast if you are too incompetent to write efficient software. In the last few months, I've noticed a similar boast about empty warehouses. Again, this is an easy boast if you are too incompetent to order ahead. Don't get suckered by this "any news is good news" strategy. Avoid incompetence and you'll avoid delay.

All of this is annoying because I hoped to make the first XR2600 board with reliable components but I may have to substitute junk components. Either way, I will be keeping my options open by writing NMOS compatible firmware. The easiest way to test for NMOS/CMOS is the BRA opcode. CMOS follows the unconditional branch. NMOS falls through.

I haven't ordered anything online this year. Despite this, I received 3000 neodymium magnets on Mon 14 Feb 2022 and I received 50 decorative PCBs on Wed 16 Feb 2022. I redundantly ordered PCB business cards from JLCPCB and PCBWay. Both sets were manufactured within two days. One set arrived within two weeks. The other set left China 41 days after manufacture. I'd like to think that it spent Christmas, New Year and Chinese Spring Festival in a shipping container. However, that might be the problem. Companies are hoarding 40 foot intermodal shipping containers and the price has risen by more than a factor of three over 10 years. It is like a corporate toilet paper shortage: there *might* be a shortage so we'll have to buy some now - and that causes the shortage.

I know a little about shipping container brokering due to a former house-mate. I've had some eclectic house-mates and this includes a man who ran a road construction business across three countries in Africa. He'd often send used machinery from North America or Europe - or send it around Africa. He was quite efficient with shipping containers. For example, fitting pieces of a crane around a road surfacing machine. Occasionally, I'd be in our kitchen while he was negotiating with ‪brokers. The way it works is quite simple. You buy the shipping container outright. When it is surplus to requirements, a broker buys it back at discount. It is very much like used car sales. And like the used car market, shortages are increasing prices. In 2012, shipping containers were about USD6000. In 2022, they may exceed USD25000. (Source: ToyWorld magazine, volume 11, issue 5, Jan 2022, page 358.)

Supposedly, prices will reduce when new shipping container factories start production in 2023. I don't believe it. We have supply problems which would vex Milo from Catch 22. This isn't going to be solved with more shipping containers. It definitely won't be solved with autonomous flying shipping containers - although that's a great way to destroy infrastructure.

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Modules | Processors | Boards | Boxes | Beep, Beep! I'm a sheep!

Similar problem with 74AC163. Distributors unknown.

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Modules | Processors | Boards | Boxes | Beep, Beep! I'm a sheep!

People thought I was joking when I said my reused IC SBC project was a workaround for the IC shortage..

These last few years I’ve been playing with ATTiny10’s, 44’s/84’s and the 3-7cent otp mcu’s - most cheap IC’s seem to have become unobtanium now and my garage seem better stocked than Farnell when it comes to the cheapest of mcu’s.

For the 6502-crowd at least DIP package stocks seem to last longer than smt packages.

Caveat emptor when it comes to pulled, used or “NOS” IC’s - but I must say I’ve had more fun with AY-3-8910’s, other 80’s synth chips, NMOS 6502’s etc than I would with what’s available at the moment for a hobbyist.

When you can’t even get a new Raspberry Pi (Farnell says September now) to play with I’m super happy playing with IC’s that might or might not pass the “BRA ima65c02”-test.
I know others are not so happy with the uncertainty but I actually appreciate the challenge of working around the limitations and quirks of 80’s trash

At least SST39SF010A still seems obtainable - it’s a bit faster to program than my pulled ‘90s w27c512 roms

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New new new new new video out! Serial Bootloader for my 65uino
Also, check out: I2C on a 6502 Single Board Computer
and Complete hardware overview of my 6502 SBC R1

If you're after a Raspberry Pi, use rpilocator.com. I recently needed to get a couple of RPi Zero 2 W boards, which we out of stock everywhere. I subscribed to the site's RSS feed and about 10 days later was alerted to available boards in Germany, which I quickly snarfled up. (Yes, that's a word.)

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I like it when things smoke.
Blog – Zolatron 64 project

I guess that’s another way to get around the problem. Personally I think my Raspberry Pi needs are met - unless you happen to find a CM4. I could snarfle some of those

…or maybe I’ll make an 8051 board next

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New new new new new video out! Serial Bootloader for my 65uino
Also, check out: I2C on a 6502 Single Board Computer
and Complete hardware overview of my 6502 SBC R1

Shortages are getting serious. Taiwan had a water shortage and many of the chip factories are now using reverse osmosis to reduce water consumption.

Neon, used in chip lithography, was disproportionately supplied by Ukraine but supplies may be disrupted. I assumed that Neon was condensed out of the air, like Oxygen, Nitrogen or Argon but, hey, we have a Helium shortage. Perhaps there is a fiddly step, such as centrifuging pure Neon. A more worry statistic (unconfirmed) is the Russia and Ukraine product 30% of the world's wheat and 20% of the world's corn. A Neon shortage might be the least of our problems.

Regardless, something has gone screwy in supply chains and some of Mouser's expected shipping dates are now more than 12 months away:

• Wed 16 Mar 2022: CD74HC573E which affects 8 bit 65816 address multiplexing.
• Tue 14 Jun 2022: SN74HC595N which affects SPI and SNES peripheral adapters.
• Tue 28 Jun 2022: SN74HC74N which affects privilege schemes and trivial clock stretching.
• Tue 9 Aug 2022: SN74HC157N which affects 4 bit 65816 address multiplexing.
• Thu 22 Dec 2022: SN74HC139N which affects a trivial decode scheme.
• Sat 11 Mar 2023: AT28C256-15PU. Others are also affected.
• Tue 16 May 2023: SN74HC574N which affects latching.
• In stock, maybe: Aries DIP ZIF sockets.

Annoyingly, this is the majority of significant components required to make XR2602 with 20 bit address-space, privilege bit and SPI/SNES interface. The simplified XR2601 requires 28C256, 74HC139 and 74HC595 but is otherwise unaffected.

I may design a SST39SF010 to 28C256 adapter or bodge one with perfboard.

If we run out of NAND gates or perfboard then we're really screwed.

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Modules | Processors | Boards | Boxes | Beep, Beep! I'm a sheep!

Saw this on eBay, 750pcs GAL22V10 for $360 (disclaimer: I don't know the seller). Split that among a few people then no need to worry about logic availability. This is one of the reasons for using CPLD, I only need to stockpile a couple device types and I'm good for a long long time.
Bill