Repair Parts Running Out For GNS 430/530 - AVweb

Garmin does not manufacture the components that go into their hardware and they use components that are used in a lot of different hardware. After 25 years the chip manufacturers have moved on. I would guess that alot of the chips in the 430 are no longer manufactured by the chip makers and garmin can no longer buy them. I am actually surprised that it made it this long. I work for the USAF and we have old hardware we are trying to keep running and the price of getting the components to repair the hardware is well in excess of the original purchase prices. Nobody is going to make manufacturing runs for volume as small as the 430/530 repair. We had some plastic components we needed to replace on an aircraft and we went to a manufacturer and said we needed 200. They came back with “you mean 200,000 right?”