Date codes (Year and week). You'll find the same on just about
every chip too. Can be useful to determine the approx age of a
product, say for repairs or sourcing parts. Sometimes the Year
is a single digit and the decade is just implied. Haven't seen that
on 90's decade, but for example 936 on an old old board is
probably 1979 and similar for an 80's product. Something you
have to judge by physical state of product, technology level and
so on. Can't see a good reason for a 3-digit date code, almost
the hardware equivalent of y2k. Where programmers were saving
RAM, chip mftrs were saving $1 worth of ink per year.

Jinx

> CTS SINGAPORE; MXO-55GB-2C; 1.8432 MHZ; 8747 1202
> CTS KNIGHTS INC; MXO 50-2; 19.584 MHZ; 8138 028
> 6N/S TD1145C; 25.175MHz; 8918 NDK JAPAN
> CK1145MC; 28.322200MHz; 8912
>
> Do the 8xxx numbers refer to some common standard?  They all seem to
> have them, even though they are made by different companies.
>
> --
> IanSmith@erie.net
>