Screaming Circuits: Fun With Electrolytics  Fun With
Electrolytics  I was fiddling with one of my robot boards the
other day - popping some passives on and off and checking out
subs and alternate values. I was doing this on a couple of
boards at the same time. Everything was going along fine until I
started to do a power-on test. The first board was fine. The
second one would briefly light the power indicator LED. It would
start a full brightness and then fairly quickly fade out.  My
first thought was that I had been too agressive with my
soldering iron and had burnt something out. (who has already
guessed what really happened?). Turns out, that wasn't the case.
I put it aside and came back to it a few days later. This time,
I gave it the finger test and discovered that my regulator was
hot. Darn. Next, I found a hot tantalum cap. Nothing looked out
of the ordinary/ I stared at it for a while. The + side was on
the left in both parts and... The plus side was on the left in
both parts. One was supposed to be o