Burned up my first chip!

[Ludis Langens]

Gordon Couger <gcouger at ionet.net> wrote:
> You'll burn a lot more before your done. Some are a lot more spectacular.
> Like blowing a 5 amp FET of the board next to your ear or having 
> tantalum cap go up in flames.

This reminds me of the summer I was working on DC motor controllers as
an
intern.  A triac in our power supply failed and took a bunch of other
parts
with it.  This tripped the circuit breaker in our power source (you
know,
the one in the wall.)  There was a bright flash of light - three feet in
the air above the circuit board.  I had to go tell my boss that 60% of
the
world's supply of a new type of FET (prototypes...) just blew up.

Before that, there was the time that my boss grabbed the motor to stop
it.
The motor stopped, the driver board exploded.  Good thing for office
chairs
with wheels.

Bringing this slightly back on topic, that was the summer that I learned
not to disconnect power from a blown up circuit right away.  It is so
much
easier to find the bad parts when their cases are cracked open and
smoking.
Shutting the power off quickly won't save any additional parts - the
damage
has all been done already.

Ludis Langens      unsigned long BinToBCD(unsigned long i) {unsigned
long t;
ludis at cruzers.com     return i ? (t = BinToBCD(i >> 1), (t << 1) + (i &
1) + 
!! NEW address !!                (t + 858993459 >> 2 & 572662306) * 3) :
0;}