flux related incident

[List, Chris]

On Wednesday, March 04, 1998 7:20 PM, media at mail1.nai.net
[SMTP:media at mail1.nai.net] wrote:
> "It's not a bug, it's your solder flux--I mean, it's a feature."
> 
> While I had it opened and was testing the battery voltage I noticed
what
> seemed like a salt stain around the terminals.  I scraped it off and
then
> cleaned the area with a damp cloth.  Having read the ASM-1/flux thread
I'd
> thought I'd close it up and see if it worked.  It did!!

"This is a true story from a real Carcinogenic Solvent Deflux user!"

My 303 suddenly stopped working shortly after I bought it. This was back
when I was just getting started with DIY and didn't know a thing about
circuit workings. I sent it to our own Kevin Lightner who diagnosed the
strange problem and fixed it at a very reasonable price (he also took
the time to explain that it was a fried buffer causing the CPU reset not
to trigger on start-up). I got it back and it worked great for about a
week. Then one day - bam, same thing. Kevin was very patient with me on
the phone and told me what chip to replace (he had socketed it). I
replaced it and it worked. We couldn't figure out why it kept burning
out. I did a live show that weekend with a couple of wires sticking out
of the battery compartment that would let me manually reset the CPU if
there was another problem!

Within a couple of days, same thing happened. I played with the thing
for hours on my newly acquired scope, and I was no better off than when
I started. I noticed strange bleedthrough of CPU clock on the power
supply near the chip, but couldn't figure out why. The board seemed
really dirty and grimy to me, so -  just to make myself feel better
about this lemon I had paid too much money for - I showered it with
deflux 'til it was shiny-clean. I've never had a problem since and that
clock bleedthrough has disappeared! 
Thank you Carcinogenic Solvent!

- Sincerely, CList of Walawala Washington