| magic smoke A substance trapped inside packages that enables them to function (also called "blue smoke"; this is similar to the archaic "phlogiston" hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up - the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. See , . ter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking on a dedicated system, I was testing code by blowing s and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that *after* I realised that didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs - the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of {Murphy's Law}. [] (1995-01-25) |
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