[Scott Dorsey]

Richard Crowley wrote:

Discreete transistors can be made profitably on pretty small
wafer sizes. And there should be lots of small (3-inch, 4-inch
even 6-inch) tools out there that have been replaced by larger
ones. But even if you could get the equipment for free, it still
costs a lot to run a cleanroom. Not to mention whether you
could get the plans/masks for those old products (or spend
$$$ to reverse-engineer them with some time on a SEM.
I can't say that I'm surprised that there aren't more companies
out there still making legacy discrete semiconductors.

Hell, TI and Fairchild didn't have cleanrooms when they were making
big discrete transistors. Transistors, Inc. even took a while before
they figured out it was important to prevent assembly technicians from
smoking while they worked.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."