IC pin corrosion

Tony Duell wrote: UK TVs (even back in the 405 line era) tend to use a 75 ohm coaxial aerial cable (not a flat twin 300 ohm one that's popular in the States). This cable often had an air-spaced insulator between the centre core and the braind, and thus there were channels the full length of the cable. The aerial terminal box had developed a water leak. Rain came in there, ran down the channels in the cable (not down the outside), then came out inside the coaxial plug at the back of the set and ended up on the floor. Of course this messed up the properties of the cable, hence a weak signal and a poor picture. -tony Nice tale and after seeing some of those old coaxials, easy to believe it must have happened more than once. Reminds me of one of my worst memories on the big iron systems. Had a computer that was on the top floor. The building maintenance people were running the grounding cable on the lightning rod down to the earth rod.. And discovered this wonderful cable channel that carried the power from the basement MGs up to the main frame power supplies. The inevitable happened and a lightning bolt took out all the supplies on the entire system. The overvoltage crowbars saved most of the logic. But the lightning literally vaporized the power cables, and the MG was a big piece of toast. Nobody was punished - the union said that there were no guidelines stating this was a bad thing. And common sense seems to be a rare commodity. Billy