Circuit Board Repair

It isn't mentioned anywhere in the data sheet.

It's not important.

For reputable manufacturers, whenever the marking is not part of the Datasheet, there is a chance of the component being a cheap lower quality equivalent of the searched part.

I disagree with that information not being important. As far as I know, there are multiple industries where individual components must have been manufactured in the last few years to be used in assemblies, due to reliability.

Have it your way.

I agree. I was once troubleshooting a piece of equipment in the field. There was a temperature sensitivity problem where the equipment would work with the card drawers open but not closed up.

By blocking off ventilation in various places with cardboard I was able to isolate the problem to a single card, and then by applying freon spray, to a specific IC.

I contacted the manufacturer of the equipment and the rep asked for the date code on the IC. When I relayed it, he said those ICs should have been pulled from production, there was a known temperature sensitivity problem.

So, if there is a bad run of ICs, the number is useful for tracking.

I totally agree. I had a similar situation with some A/D chips. They started failing from heat Related issues and giving max digital values (65536) which caused havoc in our controllers. Turned out that our brilliant Purchasing Agent got a “bargain” on some, same part number etc. on a secondary market website. But as they started failing in the field and we went back to the mfr, it turned out that entire batch had been recalled and scrapped. So apparently someone dug them out of a garbage bin and put them up for sale.

Thanks for all the info guys. So is there any chance that a component like this has to be programmed first, or is this device not that complicated?

The datasheet says this is a microcontroller with a one-time programmable memory - probably won't do much without being programmed.

Thanks. That is what i suspected. Initially i thought the bottom numbers indicated the program. How do i one program the chip?

Try the user manual