Henry Kolesnik wrote:

Over the last few years I've acquired quite a few consumer electronincs pcbs
including TVs, VCRs, stereos, etc, so when I discovered that I needed a
tantalum to repair some test equipment I was going to salvage a tantalum. I
couldn't find one anywhere, so I assume they're too expensive or too
unrelaible for high end consumer electronics. A couple of the boards were
from my personal stuff purchased new. One example is a MGA Mitsubishi rear
projection TV that operated flawlessly for nearly 20 years of daily use.
Most of my test equipment comes from hamfests and is surplus after becoming
obsolete and non-operative in less than 20 years. That leads me to wonder
what the real story is behind tantalum capacitors. What do the experts have
to say?
tnx
hank wd5jfr

They can have very good characteristics (small size, low esr, high
parallel resistance and good capacitance stability) but have some
strange failure modes if they are misapplied. Digikey sells a great
variety of them. I can seldom justify their cost in production
designs, but use them quite often in one offs.

--
John Popelish