Finding shorts in boards

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Thatcher <melamy at earthlink.net> writes:

 Steve> the biggest culprit when it comes to older electronics is the
 Steve> good old tantalum cap. I have seen these be a little
 Steve> resistive, dead shorts, etc.

...and sometimes the assembly shop installs them backwards, which
produces startling results -- often with quite a delay.

I recently found out that there exist tantalum caps with builtin fuses
-- the idea is that if they short out, the fuse blows and the system
keeps going.  If you have a whole pile of them as bypass caps, that's
a good approach.

  paul