Counterfeit parts

[puretube]

not a "part" per se,
but composed out of possibly counterfeit parts:

16GB CnMemory USB memorysticks...

bought @ wellrespected retailer

memorized 2GB;

both of `em...

(the interface & address circuit worked well;
properties showed ~16GB diskspace;

but: filling the space beyond 2GB won`t work,
and resulted in frozen PCs/blue screen;
(both: "V*sta", and W*nXP)

Data lost...

OK, I got themoney back for those 2 stix...

Today: new offer - 8GB stick for 20€...

why can`t I get more than 1GB onto it???
(even after reformatting (properties sez: 7.61GB)

[Elektrojänis]

Another problem is when a manufacturer is duped into using bad parts without realizing it. This happened in the mid-90s with electrolytics (I am sure some on here remember this) that were used in the power filtering on computer motherboards. This was due to a Chinese manufacturer stealing the recipe for the compound in the cap but that had been a bad recipe. You started seeing boards blowing their caps or at least bulging before being noticed. Some high priced boards were victims in this fiasco as well. This is more an industrial espionage case but the same thing could have happened with counterfeits as well.

It is not over yet... It is still happening. There was a very strong "wave" of this kind of problems about two or three years ago. I work as an IT support and on one or two computer models almost all power suplies had to be changed and I suspect most of them had bad electrolytics (worked interminently before total failure etc.). Little later almost as many of them failed again. (Or maybe even more, but the failures spread over longer time). This time it was the motherboards, and it was the capacitors for sure as it was easy to see the swollen tops on the electrolytics. Most of them had even leaked some of the elctrolyte out.

There are around 1000 people working in the organisations I am supporting... In just a few years we changed probably around 150-200 power suplies... Maybe even more...

These computers were all from one manufacturer, but others had similar problems too.

The cap failure problem has been given name too: Capacitor plague ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague )