I haven't had any of my 5071A die yet. Doug - can you tell us how long your first 5071A tube lasted? As for shelf-life, you can read about the official way to store and periodically pump them. But I'm quite certain that many of us have surplus units that probably haven't been powered for years and some of them end up working fine. /tvb

Actually, I bought two of these in the hope that one will die, so I can remove the radio module and play with it :-) > WWVB Radio Controlled Clocks: Recommended > Practices for Manufacturers and Consumers > http://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/1976.pdf > > NIST Special Publication 432 > http://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/1383.pdf I read these a while back.

It just went on my list of things to have before I die!!!

We did ship some boards with rows of 150pF SMT capacitors on register select inputs of an IDT bit-slice ALU due to a die shrink that made the internal registers get corrupted with fast incoming edges. Talk about analog solutions to digital problems! --David Forbes

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American G.I.

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Answer - switched die three years ago, Ft is now " much better " ( now 3x old parts ). Odd they never mentioned that to people who work for the same company. Simulate design, Build design, verify design, ship it for a few years. Odd things start to happen. Look at some parts. Package looks different. Ask around.....

May this thread die now please. In a message dated 5/21/2011 15:07:39 Pacific Daylight Time, mikes@flatsurface.com writes: > >I know it's kind of a tangent, but when people were talking about >phones & radio broadcasting the time..

The only path I see is, "Get 'em hooked using their old receivers, and they will need new receivers to replace them as they decide they can't live without the enhancements or as their old receivers die." But any number of users might decide that the legacy capabilities were sufficient.

So the change is likely to provide a modest upgrade path for the vast majority of actual users, at the expense of a few die-hards (hobbyists, mostly) who are trying to get more out of an LF timing source than it is really capable of delivering.