I'm just doing some rough prototyping at the minute and to save squinting I put a identifying label on the MCU showing part no and orientation, from one of those thermal Dymo-style labelling machines. What I hadn't anticipated is the bonus feature - these are thermal labels so of course give a visual indication when the magic smoke gets let out.
Nice. One time long ago, I got snookered by a damaged prescaler in an
8-pin DIP. For recompense, I connected pins 1-4 to one side of a 120V mains plug, and pins 5-8 to the other. Made a very satisfactory bang, and excavated a crater out of the epoxy.Most soothing to my irritated soul, and _that_ chip was not going to waste any more of my time. (Pease talks about 'Widlarizing' in a similar vein.)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
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