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Garmin suspending shipments for some GPS and transponder and Com units until 2Q 2022 due to supply chain issues

Peter wrote:

The art of electronic design for a long product life, never before highlighted as strongly as in the past year or so, is to use old commodity parts where possible.
Or to use whatever roughly fits the bill and is actually available, and have people on staff who can quickly rewrite an abstraction layer.
ESMK, Sweden

the last estimation I have seen is that chip shortage will probably continue all year 2022.

LFMD, France

Or to use whatever roughly fits the bill and is actually available, and have people on staff who can quickly rewrite an abstraction layer.

Most of the time that isn’t possible though. You can’t replace a microcontroller by writing a new abstraction layer. You have to rewrite basically the whole code, and then test everything all over again. It is possible with chips which have a simple function e.g. an SPI FLASH chip, which just needs an address, blocksize, etc.

the last estimation I have seen is that chip shortage will probably continue all year 2022.

That’s probably true although lines made by large firms (e.g. ST) are likely to free up sooner. The smaller players who have no fabs (say Atmel?) will continue to screw around.

As I wrote above, a product designed by “an old guy” is much less likely to get hit than a product designed by someone new to the game who tends to design-in the latest flashy (no pun intended) chip, especially one from one of the companies which have a history of shafting people, like Maxim one of whose execs openly said they have a policy of using nonstandard pinouts because it locks customers into their parts. Maxim is one of the sh1ttiest companies but there are plenty more with a general reputation of dropping product lines faster than a whore’s knickers. I have a product which uses an old Atmel chip. It went on a last time buy some years ago. I had maybe 5 years’ of stock so didn’t jump on it right away, and by the time I did I found the replacement part had also been dropped

A lot of the time the solution is a large strategic stock and I have probably 10-20 years’ stock of a Hitachi CPU. But most companies aren’t going to be doing that – even if they can afford it. But stock is a wonderful defence from trouble… I am currently dealing with a chinese injection moulder which has basically stolen a moulding tool (a common chink practice). They don’t know we have a couple of years’ worth of the mouldings in stock.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

But stock is a wonderful defence from trouble…

Absolutely. Others are long term contract, flexibility in design., etc.

The truth is, that there are companies that do not have problems with keeping their commitments or even sell new stuff, because they have done prudent planning in the past.
Many companies who have problems now actually have praised themselves in the past that they were so great on optimizing their stock and contract while what they basically did was to have less stock and contract options than they need to fulfill their obligations because they thought they can buy what they need cheaper in the future. Know they learn that they can’t.

Yes, there are few cases where a small company has been hit hard by a container getting stuck in the Suez channel for 2 months. But in the grand scheme of things the current crisis is not unavoidable fate but man made by management teams that thought they are just too clever for this world…

Germany

Malibuflyer wrote:

Yes, there are few cases where a small company has been hit hard by a container getting stuck in the Suez channel for 2 months. But in the grand scheme of things the current crisis is not unavoidable fate but man made by management teams that thought they are just too clever for this world…

@Malibuflyer – you mean made by the shareholders? Typically, if you are not running what they call “lean chain”, then your KPI are worse than the average in the industry. And then shareholders say “aha! fix it.”

EGTR

I finally got my GTN 750 xi after a 6 month wait. If anyone is interested, I am selling the GTN 750 that I had in my panel. I am asking a premium because of the current 6 month order time, Garmin is quoting August if you ordered last week. My unit is not for everyone because of my asking price of $17,500. It is expensive, but some have traded hands in the mid twenties. If you are trying to finish an installation and need one, this might work for you. The GTN 750 I am selling has a full install kit, new antenna, and the unit has less than 100 hours of use and is in perfect condition. PM me if you have any interest.

KUZA, United States

Isn’t this a better place for your ad @NCYankee?
Marketplace

Ok, thanks for the explanation below Peter.
@NCYankee, disregard, thanks.

Last Edited by Dan at 16 Feb 12:34
Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

He did one but for some reason it is not yet showing. I am out for a bit and will look later.

EDIT: advert placed but did not appear because payment was not made – presumably because it sold by then.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

A used non Xi GTN750 for immediate delivery sells at the same price or even more expensive as a factory new Xi ordered now and delivered ???

Amazing!

Germany

Peter wrote:

Luckily, due to my advanced age and wisdom, most of my designs use old commodity parts

That’s one way of putting it

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)
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