[sdiy] There is no fun analogue chips anymore!

[David G Dixon]

> Oddly enough, these are all surface-mount capacitors, but 
> I've had disc ceramics perform similar stunts before.  Now, 
> someone mentioned to me recently that they had a crystal 
> filter fail because of a DC bias across it causing the silver 
> plating to migrate across the crystal and short sections out 
> - could the same happen inside disc ceramics?

It's obvious that most electronics today are built around planned
obsolescence, with the cycle sometimes as short as two years (like cell
phones).  Could it be that this thinking has also invaded the manufacture of
the SMD parts themselves?  After all, it all gets thrown away at the same
time, so why put a component designed to last for 20 years into a device
that will be binned in two?