The continued unavailability of the SN75176 chip is keeping me from completing my electonics, so I started looking for a replacement part. I found a Sparkfun SP3485 breakout board, and I thought I might be able to use it to provide communications for my protoboard Extruder Controller, but then I noticed that the chip is wired differently, with /RE tied to DE. When I compared this to the Motherboard and Extruder Controller schematics, and reviewed the SN75176 and SP3485 datasheets, I got confused. Why is /RE tied high??? Wouldn't that disable the chip? And has anyone else successfully substituted an SP3485 for the SN75176 chip? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,41680#msg-41680 Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:12:20 -0400 Phorum 5.2.23 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,42492#msg-42492 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,42492#msg-42492 But the breakout board SP3485 came in handy. It really is a drop-in replacement if you have a 5V circuit (or so I'm told) so I removed it from the breakout board and put it on my motherboard, which is now complete and functional.]]> eustace Reprappers Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:06:34 -0400 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,42092#msg-42092 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,42092#msg-42092 I see that the soic package is out of stock at digikey,
but mouser has some in stock in soic-8:
[mouser.com]

Or you could still buy a DIP8 version,
(digikey shows over 10K in stock): [search.digikey.com]

put it on some perfboard, and tack on wires to connect. Tedious, but probably faster than revising the ckt to use a different chip.]]> Larry_Pfeffer Reprappers Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:35:37 -0400 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,42091#msg-42091 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,42091#msg-42091
What country are you in? In the US, digikey seems to show no shortages, under a buck/part in quantity 1.
[search.digikey.com]

If you're in a bind on this, send me a PM and I'll see if I can help you out.]]> Larry_Pfeffer Reprappers Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:27:08 -0400 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,41680#msg-41680 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,41680,41680#msg-41680 eustace Reprappers Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:07:29 -0400