No, but I still remember the smell. The experts taught me, but I did enough board revs that summer to be pretty good at it.
This thing was running at 150 MHz which was damn fast back then, so I couldn’t wirewrap anything. It turned out the Motorola data sheets had the +12 v and -12v pins reversed, so I blew out chips until I called them and they finally admitted the mistake. The parts came in the day after I officially left - I came in and everything worked.
I had one really cool chip - I think it was the core of a rolling-code garage door opener system, many possibilities for entry lock circuits - that blew every time I applied power. Limiting the current didn’t help - nudging it up milliamp by milliamp did nothing until it suddenly pegged the meter… another chip dead.
I ended up on the phone with the design engineer and we walked through my breadboard setup, connection by connection, as he did the same thing on his bench.
His chip blew, too - and with the same audible POP I got the first time, with the current limiting set up around an amp. I could hear it, along with his cursing. I never did get a final answer or a working chip, so a whole bunch of neat project went in the “maybe someday” file…
My dad built a Heathkit color tv back in the 70’s. I wish I knew how much time he spent on that, but he’s not around any longer to ask. I’ve built a small battery practice amp for guitar, and I helped my 12 year old put together an arduino sythesizer from Thinkgeek last year.