HOW CAN THEY DO THAT?!?! (lm3909)

[gadgeteer]

When did this get discontinued? I was sure you could still buy them even from Radio Shack! I'm gonna hafta buy a supply of them! Anyone remember all the nifty circuits from the "NS Applications Handbook"? And I saw a circuit on the web for an animal tracking transmitter, using micro power.<p>That made such an excellent fake-alarm indicator for cars. And I used one in a digital loop carrier; seems our unit was to be the only one at Supercom that was not to be powered (mainly because ours didn't WORK yet); many of the boards weren't even boards at all, just aluminum plates with handles and LEDs hot-glued on. Manager walked up one day to the unpowered, non-electronic system, and one of the FAIL LIGHTS was BLINKING. (He liked it so much, that aluminum "board" ended up flashing its heart out in his office...) Darned company folded before I could get to that empty switchplate in the lobby; I was going to make the switch handle itself flash (superbright LED, alkaline "AA" battery --- the switch would only control its own handle); but everybody walking by would see it brightly flashing and think, "That's GOTTA be important..."<p>I did run across a discrete design, offered on the web --- they say it should do everything the IC did...
http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/LM3909.html

[Dimbulb]

I know the LM3909 is small but I'm not sure if small is beautiful. <p>The hobbiest sometimes get the leftovers from production but there are lots of interesting designs. I wonder what the cellular market will leave us and how small will the parts be ?<p>I guess there must be alot of flasher hits:
http://www.discovercircuits.com/L/lite-flash.htm