I've fought this kind of battle before - trying to find a "jellybean" part
just at the fringe of my personal experience. Most of the time I'll pull
up two suppliers web sites (Mouser and Digikey typical for me) and
first sort the results by "stock on hand" - if they have 100K plus on
hand, somebody must be using them (probably). Then sort the results
by price. It's another application of the 80/20 rule - somewhere at the
bottom 20% of the price range and at the top 20% of the stock on
hand range - for at least two suppliers - there's usually a candidate
or two that's worth digging into the datasheet to learn more about.

Not always perfect, usually a good start.

-Denny
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