The problem for New Zealanders wanting to get National Semiconductor parts is as
follows: natsemi used to have a very good distributor in NZ, but they canned
using this distributor in the early to mid 1980's. The then gave the
distributorship to another company. This company is very similar to Radio Shack
in that it is a hobbyist electronics store staffed with young people who know
minimal about chips. Please note here that I am not setting out to denigrate
these stores, they do serve a useful purpose and I have bought stuff from them,
sometimes they are the easiest or only source of what you want. The problem
arose with them being the nation wide distributor, they never had any stock,
they didn't know what the chips you wanted were, in short the source of every
difficulty you could imagine. If the chip you wanted was not a bog standard op
amp or TTL chip, they did not have it. Now NatSemi wonder why NZ "abuses" the
sample handouts.

When the original distributor of NatSemi parts had the agency they were always
my first port of call to get a chip, and they generally had it, or the staff
were well informed and new what you were talking about, and could tell you if
they would ever get the chip. Not so now. Ah well, thats progress for you.