Why are my S3A pins getting destroyed?

Mar 23, 2012 2 Replies

I have a S350A VQFP100 on my custom board, with all the pins connected to large pads all around the chip.



I have destroyed 3 pins, total. Two pins can't be used as inputs anymore, and the third lost tri-state ability. BTW, the pins are in two VCC banks.



True, my soldering tip is not grounded, but the last pin was destroyed a few days ago, and I didn't physically touched the pad it is connected to for at least 3 months.



First two pads I did touch a lot with my soldering tip while testing, so I can believe that it was destroyed by ESD. At that time, I have also soldering 10 other pads near those two, but they didn't die.



But what about that third pin? It is a part of the data bus (D2), located in top bank, and it hasn't been touched by soldering tip or even the scope for at least 3 months.



So, why did it die?



Damn it, I've found the error, the wire is badly soldered.

And fixing one wire is worse than having to replace a whole FPGA?

-- My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook. My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook. Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software

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