Interesting new video from FEDEVEL on being burned by fake chips

[HwAoRrDk]

I came across this new video from Robert Feranec at FEDEVEL about his experiences with fake chips.



To summarise: a batch of dev boards was being tested by the assembler and all were failing. He investigated and found that all four voltage rails had main input voltage on them, which had killed practically all the other components on the board. The assembler remarked that the some of the four chips that formed the different power supply circuits looked slightly different to the usual. Upon closer examination of the bad chips, they did not measure as one would expect to, and crucially had two pins commoned together that shorted the input voltage straight to the output.

According to a remark by Robert in the YouTube comments, these chips were bought from an authorised reseller. Crazy!

I would bet that they are just a straight-up empty package, with no silicon inside, just a leadframe. Although, he only showed measurements of four of the eight pins, so maybe not.

[coppercone2]

what retailer?

[HwAoRrDk]

Dunno, he didn't say.