On 11/28/2014 09:26 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2014-11-28 02:49, Anton Aylward wrote:
Oh, then there's oxidization ... Having electrical current flowing tends to encourage that, for some reason, despite that the adverts about 'electronic' car body anti-rust devices claim.
Current flow causes corrosion because it is the same effect as in batteries. In the right direction and voltage it impedes it - or you can place a "sacrifice anode", connect it to a calculated voltage, and it is that anode which corrodes, not the ship.
The metals used in electronics contacts are calculated to avoid this - the best is using gold plating. For that an other reasons.
True, but there are two provisos to that. Not all 'gold' contacts are fingers on circuit boards that plug in. Even the DIN two part connectors have one end soldered in to the circuit board, and solder joints corrode. In fact solder joints are the #1 'terminal' failure mode in electronics, they always have been ever since the days of valves! that has been the greatest motivation for microelectronics and LSI. However that is slightly off topic. Wiggling contacts may make an oxidizing solder joint fail but that's another matter. There's another 'evil' of electrical current in that it seems to attract charged particles such as dust. Even the gold plated two part DIN connectors seem to attract dirt. But lets face it, not all contacts are gold plated. The legs on the centeipedal chips are very rarely gold plated, even though some of the internal wiring might be. Yes, all my memory chips-boards have gold fingers, and the mobos have retaining clips to hold them in firmly, but how often do we see problems fixed by taking those (or other) boards out and wiping the contacts clean and airbrushing the mobo sockets? Yes, there's gold, and then there's 'dross', aka dirt, dust, grime, oxided finger oils and more. And in my computers the #1 problem is CAT HAIR -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org