[cushychicken]

Inrush is a real bitch. I make it a rule to include simple inrush current control circuits whenever I do DC input that sinks more power than, say, a USB cable.

Lotsa surprise inductances out there. I've felt your pain re: inductance + input cap creating a resonant tank, too. That's a nasty surprise when you manage to create that resonance with your wiring.

[mcnugget]

The worst is when the other guys think you're crazy because they're not suffering the same problems because either the smps they have had a soft start or they overspeced the living crap out of their input stage. I gave up and just spend the 5$ for the IC that provides slew rate control, single IC with a single fet? Oh hell yeah.