Great attention to detail there by the relabelers...

Apart from the cosmetics, does it actually work?

Cant test it yet, as I still need to solder some capacitors and resistors onto the ISA backplane.

Also, I hedged my bets and ordered RAM from 2 vendors, so I at least got some correctly spelled chips (left chips on picture). There's still a very high chance both vendors might have sent me fake chips though.

It will be hillarious if your Allance chips actually work. Please keep us updated 😁

You may test the markings on the chips with cotton buds/swabs dipped in acetone or very strong (95+%) ethanol/alcohol - the "ALLANCE" fake/relabeled ones should be erased, but "ALLIANCE" markings will stay, if these chips are genuine.

Those are lasered chips so the markings won't erase, although the cotton swab will get dirty. There's black paint on top and it will start to come off and if you are lucky, original markings can come to light.

Might work, might just be remarked from another brand 80ns and be fast enough for that board.

Tiido wrote on 2024-10-02, 17:16:

Those are lasered chips so the markings won't erase, although the cotton swab will get dirty. There's black paint on top and it will start to come off and if you are lucky, original markings can come to light.

Nope. Look more carefully, the "ALLANCE" fakes are just painted. I'd bet that "ALLIANCE" labeled chips are genuine, but just to be sure - acetone/alcohol test on markings.

P.S. In some rare occasions the markings on the genuine chips also may be partially "erased", but the engravings from laser will stay.

both sets also look lasered to me... that's the new way of remarking: no more paints/stamps , it's all high-tech lasers now 🤣
IMHO this will be a huger problem in the future because nowdays most legit chips are also lasered (more cost effective) but it will make detection of fakes more difficult

It has become standard for Chinese sources to belt sand the top down and re laser etch chips. They are even doing it with real chips that are salvaged. This is to disguise that they are old or used stock. So there is a small chance those misspelled chips may work.

In my opinion, it isn't worth the cost savings. If the component is available from an official distributor, it will be one less thing to question if something isn't working correctly.

analog_programmer wrote on 2024-10-02, 18:04:

Nope. Look more carefully, the "ALLANCE" fakes are just painted. I'd bet that "ALLIANCE" labeled chips are genuine, but just to be sure - acetone/alcohol test on markings.

I have seen enough of these sorts of chips (hundreds), that it is a second nature at this point to see all this shit that is being done to them...

You can easily see the paint on top, with moulding marks not being shiny (which in case of actual Alliance chips, they should be). One of them doesn't even have the pin 1 mark since it got lost during resurfacing. Once the resurfacing is done, paint goes on top and then new markings get lasered on. I even have a tray where empty spots have some samsung memory chip markings in their bottoms 🤣.
Sometimes they do actually paint new markings on top, but those are often with different color compared to real chip, and they rub off really easily where as original markings are nearly impossible to remove.

akimmet wrote on 2024-10-02, 19:17:

It has become standard for Chinese sources to belt sand the top down and re laser etch chips. They are even doing it with real chips that are salvaged. This is to disguise that they are old or used stock. So there is a small chance those misspelled chips may work.

In my opinion, it isn't worth the cost savings. If the component is available from an official distributor, it will be one less thing to question if something isn't working correctly.

Actually I'd say there's a quite high chance they may work. The whole point is to look like a reliable provider of working chips. Deliver a batch of duds and you won't get repeat orders. No company can survive without that. It costs time and money to relabel stuff and that only makes sense if there's a sustainable business attached to it. There's probably at least a rudimentary QA process going on here as well to reject complete duds. My experience (mainly 74-logic DIPs) is that the relabeled ones basically always work, if not necessarily at the claimed spec on the label. My failure rate on genuine old chips is quite a bit higher, in the order of 10-20% (a lot more on more exotic things like Commodore SIDs :'( ). Now, both for esthetics and for knowing exactly what I am buying I still far prefer originals, but if I were purely looking for reliability, these would probably beat real old chips.

dionb wrote:

The whole point is to look like a reliable provider of working chips. Deliver a batch of duds and you won't get repeat orders. No company can survive without that.

This is not how it actually works though. Dodgy sellers just create new accounts to aliexpress, ebay or whatever and continue selling fake stuff. There are also many businesses in China who have several accounts with different names so they appear as a separate companies, although every seller account is run by a same company. I wouldn’t be surprised that some of them sell stuff that they know are duds in separate burner accounts. It doesn’t matter if one of the accounts gets bad reviews and sales dry out at some point.

However, I have bought simple glue logic, ram and such cheap commodity chips from chinese sellers with good success, so all is not junk. I usually go with seller accounts that have been operating a long time and possibly have good reviews. Also, sometimes AE or chinese sellers in ebay are almost the only option if you need something that is discontinued and not readily available.

And if I need something that is especially a bit more complex and readily available in Digikey etc. and I need a bunch of other components too, I order from them. It just saves a lot of potential hassle when you know that you are actually getting what you ordered.

Somehow, the ALLANCE RAM worked.

I popped the ALLANCE RAM into my NuXT board, and it passed the initial memory check. Now the issue is I cannot run MemTest because my PS/2 Keyboard wont work, so booting up an XT system is as far as I got.

Also I tried to use Acetone to reveal the actual RAM type, but the ALLANCE marking was engraved and it just removed some black paint.

They probably just changed the speed, which has a good chance of not being noticeable unless it's being running very close to the faster spec.

clownwolf wrote on 2024-10-14, 04:21:

Also I tried to use Acetone to reveal the actual RAM type, but the ALLANCE marking was engraved and it just removed some black paint.

Wow! Those chinese scammers are getting "better" 😀 This is the first time I see sanded chips with paint plus laser engraving for the new fake markings. They should have tried harder with the brand and the original logo for "Alliance" otherwise the laser engraving is pointless 😁

At least those fake "ALLANCE" chips seem to work.

I dont know if its just a coincidence. But I was using my newly soldered Micro8088 and newly soldered Backplane and was running CheckIt for the Memory.

I pressed ESC to cancel the test and my Power Supply blew up and tripped my house's fuse box. It also deafened me for a while cause it was right next to me. The power supply was a 600w thermaltake smart white series.

I was playing/testing some games previously and it didnt have issues. Not sure how a CheckIt test cancellation stressed the parts enough to cause a short circuit.

unlucky coinkydink. ATX supply has all the protections against shorts it needs.

I also now dont believe the ALLANCE chips had anything to do with it. I believe it was the unbranded and out-of-spec (-25% actual capacitance) MLCCs I used that failed. Or it could be just bad soldering.

But I am building another Micro8088 and Backplane with branded parts now. I will do another CheckIt test on the ALLANCE later.

Also to clarify - by exploded, I meant the fuse also blew for the PSU. Nothing dramatic like fires or shrapnel.

clownwolf wrote on 2024-10-17, 23:47:

I believe it was the unbranded and out-of-spec (-25% actual capacitance) MLCCs I used that failed. Or it could be just bad soldering.
Also to clarify - by exploded, I meant the fuse also blew for the PSU. Nothing dramatic like fires or shrapnel.

PSU is to blame, not some MLCC on your board. ATX PSU are designed to safely shutdown in case of any and all potential short circuit situations. Yes, the MLCC could be damaged during soldering - MLCC are very fragile to physical forces, soldering one end at slight angle and then forcing other end to bend can lead to micro cracks to short to fire or explosion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgKY5QWehME But fully healthy ATX PSU should be able to just take it and safely shut down. Blown fuse means internal short inside psu on primary side, most likely bridge or transistors in pfc circuit. Sometimes things just break with no obvious cause.