Crazy companies and their reluctance to relase datasheets - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: RCMR
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2011, 07:50:05 am
content: I picked up some of those small 4.3" LCD displays the other day that take a composite video input and display an NTSC or PAL signal as video.They're cheap as beans and work quite well but I wanted some info on the display controller chip because they have the undesirable behaviour of disabling the display to black instead of displaying a noisy picture. I want to use these displays for an RF video link that will sometimes become noisy and I want to be able to see whatever I can during the noisy periods so I don't want the black/blue-screen effect.I figured if I picked up a datasheet for the chip they're using I could determine pretty quickly if I could hack these boards to do what I wanted.A search for the chip turned up nothing more than a "brochure" file that gave an outline as to its features - but no real tech data.The device is a TW8817 from IntersilIn the end, I went to the manufacturer's website and discovered that you have to apply to receive the tech datasheet -- so I did.Now I get an email, not containing the requested datasheet, but asking me a whole bunch of questions about anticipated order quantities, delivery dates, etc, etc.Hell, all I want is the damned datasheet that every other manufacturer is happy to make available for download so that people contemplating using their product can evaluate its suitability. Not Intersil -- they want to do that job for you and won't let you have anything until you tell them what you had for breakfast and the age of your first-born child.Is this crazy or what?And I don't suppose someone would have the full tech datasheet for the chip in question would they?Imagine if Microchip or atmel did this kind of thing!

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2011, 08:21:31 am
content: Quote from: RCMR on July 14, 2011, 07:50:05 amIt's stupid but you just have to deal with it. Just tell them what they want to hear, make up a company name, say you're in the design dept & don't know any marketing info, whatever. When you get the datasheet, send a copy to datasheetarchive.com so others don't have the same hassle.This is quite common for chips designed for high-volume consumer apps, and is mainly because they don't want to support low-value users for these products, and the parts are often not available in sensible quantities.QuoteAtmel certainly do for some of their consumer-oriented parts.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2011, 11:32:53 am
content: Most of these things do their thing by looking for the presence or otherwise of syncs.They are possibly used in PAL TVs.Some of them can be set to "nobble" the switch to blue/black function,so you may be able to find out from one of these TVs.VK6ZGO

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2011, 03:31:27 pm
content: Just tell them you are "evaluating alternatives"Since they already sent you the datasheet, I wouldn't care what they think of me.

author: A-sic Enginerd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2011, 05:31:17 pm
content: It's not as uncommon as you think. Depending on things like - nature of the chip, typical customer base, NDA's, contract agreements, etc. Not saying this is specifically the case for what you ran into, but it even goes as far as chip companies doing custom designs for specific companies. The details of the design for a chip can give a serious competitive edge so there are cases where a customer buying a particular chip makes an agreement with the chip company to keep things tight and tidy. Previous reply about not wanting to be bothered by one-off or low volume projects can also be the case. I've worked on chips that have been cancelled simply because marketing showed a change in the market and we won't sell enough of a chip and make enough profit to justify completing the chip. So chip suppliers not wanting to talk to you unless you have the potential of min. 10k units a month.....that's their prerogative.Annoying to the hobbyist / low volume peoples found on this forum - yes. But that's the business.

author: carveone
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 05:17:50 pm
content: QuoteOr Maxim. MAXQ1010 is a rather interesting looking controller but you can't get a datasheet (have to sign NDAs and things) or a sample.

author: Semantics
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 06:10:34 pm
content: Quote from: carveone on July 15, 2011, 05:17:50 pmWell, sure, you can't bag those 10k/mo orders if the buying company is concerned that some ordinary person is armed with a datasheet and ready to hack their product!I can see that for a security microcontroller, but for a display? Maybe it's related to Copy Protection.

author: carveone
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 06:39:57 pm
content: Quote from: Semantics on July 15, 2011, 06:10:34 pmBut but but!.... It's suppose to be secure by design, not secure by shhh-don't-tell-anyone.QuoteI think it's more related to Sales Person between you and the Tech department. Like getting an engineering job - if you can just bypass HR then you might have a chance...

author: cyberfish
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2011, 05:34:20 am
content: Image sensors (cameras) are like that, too. OmniVision is probably the biggest manufacturer. I emailed them for datasheet twice. They didn't even bother replying.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2011, 09:34:11 am
content: Quote from: cyberfish on July 16, 2011, 05:34:20 amFor stuff that's listed at digikey etc. it's probably worth asking them, as you'd 1 stage decoupled from the stupid questions of the manufacturer.Also if they've supplied data to another customer they may have their own copy and just send you whet they sent them - distributors are probably more interested in the immediate sale than long-term as they know you can go elsewhere.QuoteI suspect this is mostly a filtering mechanism - if someone can't be bothered to pick up the phone how serious can they be..?

author: hisense999
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2011, 09:53:18 am
content: Quote from: A-sic Enginerd on July 14, 2011, 05:31:17 pmThis is useless way for business, sometimes this make a tired companies which have buying power but looking for fast solution - maybe big giants can waste money and time by dealing with something which they even don't see on they eyes and yes some HR see a white papers and say Whoa ! This IC is so cool we will order 100k of it!I never got an answer as "Dear customer just now minimal order qtty is 10k units a month, if your product can fit on it then feel free to contact with us for more details and NDA".I also remember not so long time ago my corespondence when I want to get SDK kit for dongle and check how this crap can fit and if have any more value than plastic and usb connector price.Me-> Request for SDKThey-> Please describe your product and qtty whych you are interestedMe-> But I looking for SDK first then I can say something more about our possible cooperation, also I don't know price is I miss attachement with pricelist ?They-> Then please only describe your project.Me-> This is bla bla bla (common description)They-> Ok (idiot don't understand anything) but please describe it more and is this device is already on the market if not then possible release date, before we can send to you SDK we must know this info.Me-> Ok so before I describe any confidential info till product is not on the market then please first request to sign NDA with my company then I can describe it more.They-> No answer...By the other side:This kind of SDK and security dongle everyone can order many kinds which are floating now market, at security point of wiev company which I was mailing have the most weak and expensive dongle... I guess they just waiting for big companies where some non-technical idiot read website and think this there someone selling miracle security solution so the best is to request for 100k like a FliexLM for which Agilent must pay royality fee but this crap without any special skill I was able to crack in 30minutes - Perfect value Agilent Logic Analyzer 16901A with all options activated (market price of cracked activations 20-30k USD in 30minutes for buy any activation from reseller which 'turteling' order even one month is a better option to take all in 30minutes) yes companies like an Agilent they only pay for some name FlexLM whoa nobody can crack us! I suggest for them next time buy Coca-Cola security solution is even more good name.B.R.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2011, 10:19:55 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on July 16, 2011, 09:34:11 amI live in Europe. If I want to call a California company during business hours I have to call from home after work. I will do that if necessary, but only after a few rounds of email communication if I have more detailed technical questions. Using phones as a "seriousness filter" is an unacceptable attitude in today's economy. If you don't reply to email I don't buy your product -- whether we are talking about a $20 or $200,000 purchase.If you don't want to waste time providing technical support to people purchasing small quantities, put the damn data sheet online. Hiding data sheets for chips available on the open market is nonsense. If I am evaluating products and there are 10 companies making products that I expect are mostly similar in price and functionality, I will go for one of the 5 that have good downloadable documentation 9 times out of 10. It is just not worth my time to go and hunt down information that their competitors will provide me easily. When a company doesn't release a data sheet, my first assumption is that they are embarrassed by their own products, and don't think it can stand on its own. Instead they want to get me invested in time and effort in their product before I find out how it works and then harass me incessantly. If there was really anything novel or interesting in their data sheets, they would be advertising it proudly with white papers and application notes explaining how their patented techniques were going to give my product an edge.

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2011, 11:55:10 am
content: Same data-shit to my story...https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=3521

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2011, 12:13:40 pm
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on July 16, 2011, 10:19:55 amMost companies big enough to have this attitude have local offices or distributors. I have no doubt that companies get tons of dumb emails from people with idiot support questions, and these are expensive to even filter from the serious ones.QuoteSo instead of datasheet requests they start getting support requests, which are more expensive to deal with, so they start the filter at the earliest stageQuoteThat should be pretty low down the selection criteria, below price and availability. Of course not having full data may mean you miss out on some potential parts, or can;t discount unsuitable ones at an early stageQuoteThese companies are not interested in the business of potential users whose time cost researching parts is less than the potential savings they may make in volume production.QuoteUnfortunately some companies either don't understand this, or are only interested in high volume customers.Another aspect is that for new products they need to gauge interest to know how viable a product is - the only way they can do this is to talk to potential customers. Counting downloads on a public datasheet tells them nothing.The only answer is to work round their system, or limit your choice of parts, potentially missing out on better ones.Something else to consider is that parts like this may have significant availability or mininum order quantity issues.

author: A-sic Enginerd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2011, 06:49:17 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on July 16, 2011, 12:13:40 pmBravo. Well verbalized there "Mike".It's hard for someone not on the chip-making side of the business to understand what they can be asking for. I work for a smallish chip company that designs and sells chips for a very niche market. I have friends and family that have a hard time understanding when they hear press releases about us dropping support for a specific product, or even no longer catering to specific customers because it's simply not cost effective. Funny thing is, if we were bigger we would probably be more open. But because we're as small as we are and have the limitations on resources that we do, we sometimes have to be picky about the level of support we provide to customers.

author: hisense999
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2011, 07:33:08 am
content: Sometimes is also about handle a special group of customers which are stable customer and even if overpay a lot then they are good with it, back to old days was impossible to get GSM parts for someone else than big players and this was win-win situation huge margin on IC's and also huge on mobile phones, in these days is quiet possible to make a GSM phone even by some small start up company and IC manufacturers start to fight with very low margin.B.R.

author: XynxNet
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2011, 02:48:13 pm
content: In my opinion there is just one way to deal with those companies. Don't use their products and tell all your friends and colleages about their unfriendly customer support. I think not so few of us do know high volume customers and people in their developement teams. Sp spread the word.

author: joelby
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2011, 03:23:29 am
content: Unfortunately, these protected parts are sometimes unavoidable or just included in other things. For example, the Marvell 88E1111 Gigabit Ethernet PHY is used on a number of FPGA development boards and its datasheet is only available under NDA - something you don't usually anticipate before buying a board.The development board manufacturers/distributors aren't able to give you the information, of course.

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2011, 03:40:31 am
content: Quote from: joelby on July 20, 2011, 03:23:29 amI would like to have all the owners of those development boards asking for the datasheet, all of them at the same time.

author: joelby
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2011, 03:48:56 am
content: Quote from: ivan747 on July 20, 2011, 03:40:31 amFrom experience, it takes the company no time at all to completely ignore your requestI assume that large companies just ring up their account reps.