The old expression says - "A car is made up of thousands of parts - all supplied by the lowest bidder."

Can we take that as gospel?

seaMac in FB jail ? You should BAN YOURSELF from that blatant tech tyranny!

And seaBee with only ONE smilie ? ... Tom must have sent him a BILL for past excessive usage

Don't have a "yes/no" answer for that.

I try like heck to look at things like that from all sides including marketer, tier 1, then multiple tier 2s and so on.
Whether that is a blessing or a weakness is for someone else to decide, I don't really care.

I'll admit....sometimes it's a waste of time to even consider, as there's nothing we can do about it, but whatever.

From past experience....those boxes were probably the best they ever were, during the era when they were being used on production vehicles
and for a short while after.

What was the last vehicle to use one? (not a challenge, as I have no idea).
Maybe 1980-something?
When they were used on production vehicles, the sales volumes were highest.
OE stops using the part, volumes go in the dump. Tens of thousands or more vehicles are scrapped/attrition.
Service parts volumes go in the dump.
Performance parts volumes (which were always far less than service parts) go in the dump even more.

This is the point the part should probably be killed off....
But there is money to be made, and vehicles do need it for service+boy racer stuff.

Tier 2s (component suppliers) jack up the piece price because you aren't buying 47000 transistors per year anymore,
now it's only 1500. The painter and plater jack up their piece price because you don't need as many cases finished anymore.
Tier 1 takes cost out wherever possible to try to keep the profit. Tier 2s are told we need low cost solutions for every piece
and every process, everyone obliges... on and on down the line.

Everyone trying to make money off of a part that should probably just be put out of it's misery.

That's the usual downward spiral.
'
Those ECUs were usually pretty good, around 1988 or so, but things changed.

Some don't care about the whole story and feel the past is meaningless/and that is OK.
I've been a parts geek for too long to drop old habits.

Gut the "goop" out of one sometime, they're pretty funny to check out internally. There's almost nothing going on there
and often a ground wire is just laying against the case/failure waiting to happen.

Pictures

My Mopar ECU would say around 2000 I bought it new

Don’t have any idea on what’s failing at higher RPM



Also

Cheap Borg Warner made in the USA

And some Chinese knockoff from Mancini

As some of you know , I have been chasing RPM issues on my 383/432 Stroker ever since I put it together - All above 5,000 RPM , like a rev limiter was kicking in

Some mentioned lifters (Comp XE 275 HL) E Street 75cc heads - Others valve springs - Some mentioned nature of the camshaft

Fuel pressure and of course ignition - Eliminated fuel pressure by taping a gauge to my windshield at the point of 5,000 RPM

Two different carbs - One a brand new 800 AVS2 - Float levels - Jetting - Needles / Seats

Trying to put a Chinese ignition combo together correctly in today’s age is like - Coils are no better , MSD and Pertronix all failed , hot and overheat and just fail

Ballast - Ballast bypass , blah blah blah

All three of those ECU s failed above 5,000 RPM - They all ran fine on start and cruise - None ever failed completely

For some odd reason I didn’t want that MSD ignition box under the hood - But looking back chasing my ass I wish I would of

Anyways , problem solved , at least for piece of mind it was always Ignition related I know now

LOL, I'm in the same boat! All our cars use the old style MSD 6AL boxes. I tried an MSD Digital 6 box back when they first came out in 2002 or 2003 I believe. Had misfire issues w/ 2 brand new boxes. Went back to the old 6AL and all was well.
As much as I hate computers, I can't bring myself to go to one of the new programmable systems yet. I know it'd benefit my setup, but all that fancy stuff works great...until it doesn't.

That was the same issue I had with both chrome and orange boxes back around 2000. They would start and run fine on the street but on the dyno they would just shoot ducks. Replaced with MSD and engine pulled hard to redline. That was when I gave up on the Mopar style ignition stuff.

My Garbage in the late '90s.

Searching for more speed, back to back testing of chrome vs orange at the track.
"A/B/A/B...PFFT....lets try something else now"
I'm pretty sure this was one of those days almost nobody was there and I made like 18 runs! Good times.

Inexplicably the chrome box seemed to start easier but they ran identical ET/mph.

Both would go 6200 which is all I trusted the 100,000 mile cast pistons for.

I still ran an external soft touch rev limiter as I didn't necessarily trust myself in the heat of the moment.

Pretty sure this particular orange box is in the landfill somewhere as it eventually croaked on a daily driver.
This particular chrome box is somewhere in a storage tote here at home, and refuses to die.
I threw together an ignition and fired my 572 Hemi up with it back in April.

Had same experience, The digital 6 was the worst box i ever owner. I did every trick per msd and the misfire never went away til i replaced it with a mallory. My mopar chrome box was circa late 70's issue and was on the car when i bought it in 96.