Whatever happened to the Flat-Pack (was Re: Discontinued IC's)

From: CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com <(CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com)>
Date: Mon Jul 31 05:20:43 2000

> There's also the weird secondary market that exists because of military
> programs. TI has previously sold the IP and remaining dies for end-of-life
> parts to other firms who then either continue production or package the
> dies to meet military needs -- which is great if you need something in
> a flat-pac...

Whatever happened to the flat-pac? It seems to me to be a package that
has many of the same advantages of modern SOIC's, but maybe 30 years ahead
of its time. Was it a manufacturability issue? Was it a "proprietary"
issue? The flat-pacs I worked with were ceramic or ceramic/gold, but it
seemed pretty straightforward to me to do the same thing with plastic. Am
I wrong?

Besides, many of the flat-pac pinouts were different than the DIP pinouts,
and this was actually a good thing in the case of many TTL IC's which had
power and ground pins in weird places... It seems to me that in most
cases SOIC IC's follow the DIP pinout (though I'm sure there are exceptions.)

Tim.
Received on Mon Jul 31 2000 - 05:20:43 BST