Chinese brand stuff...beware of pot metal leads. I still prefer buying sockets from AMP. At least you know what you are getting.

OK -- 10 for $1.57
Does anybody have a clue as to how they don't lose money selling these?
First they have to buy the part at 'some' cost.
Ebay List and sell = fee
Paypal fee = $0.30 plus percentage
Pay for packing materials = ?
Pay for postage from china to practically anywhere = ?

Even if they got the parts for free, how can they make anything?
Makes it difficult for non-chinese seller to compete. For us - postage alone starts at nearly $3 and that's for an empty box.

Yet another kink in that wonderful free trade agreement we have with them...

Gee, I wish the US govt would subsidize our shipping rates so we could do the same thing. I would end up with lower shipping rates but higher taxes to pay for them - nothing like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Ricoh -- probably parted out an overage of control boards. Or could have been scrapped boards due to a design flaw... or any of a million other reasons.
This got me curious. I have two cases of preprogrammed 27C512 EPROMs that I should do a dump on. These were programmed by a manufacturer who then stuffed back into tubes -- never used them. Now I'm real interested to see if there is any ASCII data on these....

Well, gee -- that was no fun. Devices are nearly empty. About a 10K block in the middle is used. Only text is at the end -- "ANDROS1606xx". No idea as to what that would be.

Those are the worst packaging jobs I have ever seen! Really packed in plastic wrap and shipped in a padded envelope?!?!

The M suffix - don't know what it is but I do know it is not military. Military parts would be ceramic with a 5962, JAN, JM or other military part number.

Not sure why pins 1 and 26 would be lifted and left floating.
Pins 1 and 26 are both listed as "NC" with a 1608. Pin 1 is reserved for expanded addressing on larger capacity parts and typically tied high or low (usually high). Pin 26 was often tied to VCC so that a smaller device (24 pin memory) could be plugged in. Some IC's used pin 26 as an extra enable (active high so pullup or tie to VCC is required), some used pin 26 as an extra power connection and some just left pin 26 as a no-connect. Larger capacity parts also used pin 26 as an address line so if not used, should be pulled high.

With a larger device such as the 1808 - you must tie pins 1 and 26 to 'something', preferably high.

The FM18L08 is not a 6264 or 8K x 8 type memory, it is a 32K x 8 memory. it is somewhat close to a 6264 for pinout but not quite. Also, the "L" version is a 3.3V part with a maximum VDD of 3.65V. A 5V supply could damage this part.

Actually, people often refer to 54xx series and other ceramics as "military grade" but they are not. Those are actually "industrial" temperature rated parts. Using an industrial grade part in a military box without approval can get your nuts in a wringer.

The issue of remarks is what had me wondering about Andrew's links above. The 2716's had date codes from 2002 on them. I thought they dropped them long before that. But since ST no longer posts when parts were discontinued (and now disavow any knowledge of ever making them) - it's difficult to tell.

I wonder if the five bad ones are due to how they packaged the parts in plastic wrap.

Machined pin versus stamped pin has always been a "Ford versus Chevy" type argument.

Machined pin sockets are used exclusively in all of our DIP IC boards for military boards ... but very few DIP type ICs are used any longer. In 30+ years, I have never seen a failure due to machined pin IC sockets. And for our commercial equipment which had stamped pin sockets - I have also never seen a failure due to the socket. PLCC IC sockets, on the other hand....

There are decent machined pin sockets out there and there are crappy ones out there. The ones I had been selling for a long time were made by Keltron. Currently evaluting replacements due to Keltron closing it's doors last year. Machined pin sockets have round holes with inserts in them. The inserts typically have four prongs which grip the IC leg on four sides. The biggest problem with these is the metal used on the insert. Lesser grade sockets use a more rigid metal which tends to bend flat and not hold the IC legs (what Clay saw). These would be the cheap sockets found on Alibaba. However, it does seem that even some of these cheap sockets have better inserts than others. Its a crap-shoot on these. I have to admit - I did sell a few of these for awhile. After a short period of them, I was quite disappointed with them - clearanced them out for a month or so and then ended up tossing tens of thousands in the trash.

Stamped pin sockets are only used in consumer grade electronics. Some will last for decades... some (e.g. brown Scanbe) will last for minutes. Shame as Scanbe *did* make good sockets in addition to those garbage sockets. Stamped pin sockets have two basic types (not covering the old style that used to hold IC legs on edges). Single leaf and twin leaf. Single leaf means the metal leaf presses up against the IC leg on only one side. These are the truly CHEAP sockets and I'm not sure if anybody even makes them any longer. Twin leaf (or twin beam) sockets press up against the front and back sides of the IC leg. For these - I have been selling AMP 390261 series for quite a while. Unfortunately... AMP quit making these so I had to get replacements from elsewhere. Bought a bunch of Keltrons which seem to work well. But now AMP makes a new 2199298 series socket to replace 390261s so will be switching to them. The new AMP sockets are nice but are now made exclusively in China.
The problem with stamped pin sockets is the same problem with machined pin sockets. Cheap ones are made with a more rigid metal which does not retain its 'springiness'. Again, you will find this with the cheap chinese sockets.

I used to be able to buy *affordable* sockets made in Ireland, Switzerland, US and a few other places but no more... now they're ALL made in china. Fortunately, a few manufacturers still push some semblance of quality onto their products. There are some pricey ones out there (e.g. Mill-Max) ... not sure where those are made.

Yeah, you cannot tell the difference between Mil-max sockets from AMP sockets from DingDongChu sockets. They do look all the same. Same applies to stamped sockets, though.
Interesting, my last batch of 318 and 624 sockets -- the label says "Made in Canada". Gotta be good unless the Chinese now have a city named 'Canada'. I remember several years back when the Japanese pulled a stunt like this and had a city named Usa.... so all the parts from there were marked "MADE IN USA". All caps so you couldn't tell if it was USA or Usa. ... damn, I'm drifting again.

Due to the cost of these machined pin sockets and the fact that Keltron Connector Company no longer exists, I am actually considering discontinuing DIP machined pin sockets and only carrying a couple SIP sizes. Would still keep the AMP stamped sockets. May take a long time to discontinue, though -- still have ~30K of them. Difficult to compete with selling these when anybody can look on Alibaba and see "24 pin, machine pin sockets, 10 cents each". *Those* are the ones to watch out for!

I keep a nice, 24oz 'ball-peen' IC installation tool in the garage. Sounds like you can use one of those.

Poorly packaged in cellophane wrap -- nearly as bad as white packing peanuts for static discharge.

Tooling holes are clean. Clean tooling holes means the parts have probably not been blacktopped and remarked. These are probably originals....used but originals. Varying date codes such as these is also indicative of used but original parts. Rough tooling holes tend to be a part that requires a second look. Rough tooling holes are sometimes originals and sometimes are indicative of the parts being 'blacktopped' or repainted.

Military parts would have MIL-M-38510 part marking - radically different from what is marked above (plus they would be ceramic). Non-military parts but still screened for military use would be marked with "883" at the end for MIL-STD-883 screened.

In this case, "M" is simply the die revision for 1608 parts. Revision "M" was a common die revision for these parts.
Normally, Ramtron does not put the die revision on the part marking.