No , they are brand new. The vendor confirmed that they are indeed mislabeled. Why would someone do this on such a cheap part? Who knows. Maybe they got ahold of a few reels of unlabeled parts and decided to mark them as 595s. According to the vendor, no part is immune from being counterfeited. I'm just happy that the seller rectified the situation.
Somewhat unrelated: I ordered 50 SN74HC595s from an eBay vendor and received something that was obviously counterfeit. The product number printed on top of the chip is an odd font that I haven't seen on any TI parts before and it doesn't work like a 595. The vendor rectified the situation and sent me honest-to-goodness 595s as replacement (after apologizing profusely). My question is this: does anyone want these things, or should I just toss them?
Just noticed this message, missed the initial vote. Here's my input, in any case: I'd actually vote no to splitting. People need to not be so shy - if there's something in the box that they can use, they should take it! There was also a good deal of questionable stuff taking up room in the box that could probably be safely culled out. When I got the box it had a large baggy of logic components that looked like they had been stripped from a board with a blow torch and a set of pliers. Bent pins, molten packages, etc. I should have just binned it. If in doubt, take a picture of the stuff that's of dubious use and post it to the board to see if anyone needs or wants it. Based upon the state of the box when I received it, I think we could probably remove enough cruft to make room for better stuff.
Wow, the post office must have played football with the box on this last trip - it was still in pretty good shape when I dropped it off. @Tagno25, did the contents arrive reasonably unscathed? Did the glass tubes make it intact? @pib, it looks like trip count is somewhere south of 5... should probably just replace it every couple of times. Every trip seems like overkill, especially considering the relatively low value of the box contents.
Box dropped in mail yesterday to tagno25. It's getting really full, don't be shy in taking stuff out! The LED matrix boards were really tempting but I already have too many project ideas in my backlog!
Systemstech: Thanks for the additional information! I've been meaning to get a couple of the tinyprogrammer PCBs made through DorkbotPDX, it will definitely come in handy.
Snagged a couple of railman's enclosure breakout boards after I realized what they were for and added a couple of additional items:
* 25 Lite-On LT2R3SEK-002 LED (reel scrap); super bright (3700mcd @20mA 2.7v) * 4 LM3915N dot/bar driver IC * HEF4794BP LED driver * BQ4854P RTC/PMIC * A couple of analog devices samples in QSOP/TSSOP that I'll probably never use...
I think we're gonna need a bigger box! Tango25, pm me your address, I'll try to get the box moving again quickly. I've got all kinds of goodies to go in the box. Chankster, do you have schematics or more details on your Nixie board? I will probably be snagging one of those. I've got a small hoard of nixies, some of which will be finding their way into the box.