In article ,
says...

Hi, Frank,

Tektronix was, during that time, strongly discouraging all new designs from
using tantalums. IIRC they had been taken to court over a case in which
a 465 'scope (the original, not the plastic follow-ons) had spontaneously
ignited and had resulted in an expensive fire. Forensics revealed that
a tantalum power-supply bypass cap had started the conflagration. The
drive to reduce tantalum usage was driven primarily by this liability issue,
more than component cost. If you wanted to use a tantalum, you had to
justify its usage to the component/design review committees -- which wasn't
difficult if you had good reasons and your design was solid.

Wow! I didn't know this... Thanks for the neat bit of history.

I will add that most of the tantalums I'm finding in my gear are
localized filters for the power-input traces in 7000-series O-scope
plug-ins.

Everything still works great, though. ;-)


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