Buying a V9958 from ebay

Resident (45)

11-08-2018, 01:45

There are many offers of V9958 chips on Ebay, almost all of them from China.

Does anyone have experience buying these? Are they legit?

Perhaps they're old stock (I suppose production has ended decades ago) but it's somehow strange that they end up for sale in China.

By gdx

Enlighted (6219)

11-08-2018, 02:07

Most of the old chips sold on ebay are old unsold stock or recycled chips. Pay with paypal and do a litigation if the chip does not work to be refunded. You have 6 months for this.

By RetroTechie

Paragon (1563)

11-08-2018, 02:40

Bought a few V9958's from eBay over a decade ago. Which I tested in a real MSX2+ machine & found to work fine. Fake chips were not that big a problem on eBay those days. But times have changed. Personal policy these days: if buying IC's from eBay, then

Buy as collector's item, for holding in your hand & look pretty, where it isn't much relevant if copy / fake / non-functional. OR
Have some way to test IC's shortly after arrival. And use eBay's money back guarantee if it turns out you were duped. OR
Buy from a trusted source ONLY.

As for that last bit: specific sellers on eBay CAN be trusted sources. eBay as a whole 100% sure is NOT.

Note the "just gamble, it's cheap" is not among above options. Fake sellers shouldn't be rewarded. And therefore not be given money EVER. Or when given money & they send fakes, should lose money on every single one such deal through eBay's money back policy (that's where the "be able to test IC" comes in). Otherwise the problem will continue to exist forever.

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (6067)

11-08-2018, 08:31

I bought 5pcs lot from China using eBay two years ago... I've only tried 3 of them, but all of those have worked fine.

By lintweaker

Champion (465)

11-08-2018, 08:54

I also bought a few via eBay and Aliexpress. The all seem genuine, I only tried 2 of them. They work just fine.

By Philip

Champion (380)

11-08-2018, 09:03

I also bought them from AliExpress. They all (both actually) work fine.
In general I have better experience with eBay and AliExpress than a shop like Conrad.

By meits

Scribe (6544)

11-08-2018, 10:24

Ehm. Are there fake v9958 chips around? That would a) suck, but b) be a questionable honour for us.

By Angelo Sanna

Resident (40)

11-08-2018, 14:15

I have also bought last year the V9958 VDP on eBay from China. No problems with it, works very good. These VDP are NOS (New Old Stock). So you can trust it T.R. They're legit.

By Edevaldo

Master (154)

13-08-2018, 15:28

I bought a number of them on ebay and also had no issues. Seller reputation is critical.

I do not think there are fakes yet. The chip is relatively easy to find, not very expensive, and that package is relatively rare. V9938 would be the likely candidates to fake V9958 ones and they are likely rarer.

The big issue that ebay or other "distributors" of components like that may/will have is handling. Particularly ESD and storage. God knows how those parts were stored over the years and how they were handled. Humidity will cause long-term issues. ESD is also a big concern, even bigger for early CMOS devices like those ones.

In the end, you may end up with a device that will die prematurely and there is no way to know.

By T.R.

Resident (45)

13-08-2018, 17:29

Thanks for the comments. I guess I will go ahead then :-)

By RetroTechie

Paragon (1563)

13-08-2018, 23:00

Meits wrote:

Ehm. Are there fake v9958 chips around?

Never heard of such a thing. Wouldn't put it past the Chinese - they've counterfeited many types of IC's, smallish or complex, cheap(ish) or expensive parts, whatever.

But I suspect that's a numbers game. With V9958's simply not popular enough to make counterfeiting them profitable. Our luck.