Floppy Emu Hardware Failure Analysis Results
A hardware developer details the troubleshooting process for a batch of failed 'Floppy Emu' devices, identifying faulty clock crystals as the primary cause. The analysis explains how supply chain substitutions and assembly issues led to the hardware failures.
Why it matters
It provides a technical look at the challenges of small-scale hardware manufacturing and quality assurance.
Nobody enjoys troubleshooting non-working hardware, and I’m no exception. Every time I ask a contract manufacturer to assemble a batch of more Floppy Emus, there are always a few that don’t pass QA testing. What happens with those? For several years the accumulating QA failures have been sitting in a pile in the corner of my office, along with a few customer returns, all waiting for the day when I would dedicate time to their investigation. It was a long time coming, but “Failure Analysis Day” finally arrived, or more like Failure Analysis Month, and the results were pretty interesting.
Here’s a breakdown of the unique causes of failure that I identified, and the number of boards affected by each cause.
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