Though I have posted over 1400 messages to this forum, the majority of which have been helpful and have led to me being considered one of the group gurus, I have to confess to having just made the biggest mistake of my career to date.

A system I deployed back in December, with over 200 boards, and 1400 devices has gone seriously wrong, The reason ? A single transistor, whose specification I read too quickly as "minimum gain 100" when its minimum gain was 25. Result ? Lots and lots of dead boards, with circuits dying from overheating as they tried to drive the crappy transistors.

The software is fine. The 8052 stuff works well. BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER.

The moral. You are only as good as the system, not the quality of the parts.

Steve