It may not be exactly the sort of thing you had in mind, but..
I just performed an autopsy on a piece of commercially built equipment.
Findings were, that the failure was caused by 2 factors:
1. The customer connected the battery backwards, and
2. The manufacturer did not include adequate reverse polarity protection.
This is a bit surprising as they have been building these units for over 30 years,
 and they are the highest priced & best selling manufacturer of this type of equipment.

$.02 - KF4HAZ - Lonnie

----- From: "Mike Hord" <mike.hord@
> > I have a hero worship thing for the people who investigate accidents for the
> > NTSB and other agencies like that. Also CSI's. Finding out why something
> > actually happened is SO important and is often very... Perhaps not
> > suppressed exactly, but sort of swept off and ignored.
> 
> I whole-heartedly concur.  Some of the best things I've seen on the PICList
> have been the results of things like this.
> 
> Personal favorites (in terms of interesting occurances) are the radiation
> over-dosage problems (THERAC and others) and Apollo 13.
> 
> Anyone else have any interesting ones to share?
> 
> Mike H.

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