>Spend the $58 and get a current-limited supply.  That feature alone is
>worth it.  I've saved many buggy boards by having the current limit trip
>and not destroy a board while I figure out what's wrong.

Agreed. Especially when the object you power up is someone else's. First
realisation of this came when the 8086 was the "new chip on the block" and
the local distributor had just received his demo kit. he did not have time
to build it, and I wanted to play with it, so was allowed use of it over
Christmas if I built it. When powered on the supply went into current limit.
A quick check showed no solder splashes or anything else untoward. A quick
probe around with a meter with a lot of digits showed that one of the
ceramic bypass capacitors was shorted. I found it by measuring across each
one, and looking for the lowest voltage.

Another experience was the absolute opposite of this. A new computer had
arrived, and was left running a memory test to soak test for a bit. Next
thing I got a panic call from the customer that it was on fire. again one of
the ceramic bypass capacitors on the memory board had gone short circuit,
and the 300 amp 5V supply just kept on going, as the Eveready advert says.
The result was a sizable hole burnt into the circuit board, that required
some work to patch it up - we could not send it back as it had been
purchased as a minimum memory configuration and then we had fully populated
the board ourselves, but it was one of the original components that died.

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