[lefra]

My university made us use really crappy power supplies and dev boards. Nothing worked unless you first put a large bulk capacitor on the power supply's output, and small capacitors close to the components.

Also I got bitten by parasitics in capacitors very early in my career: capacitors of different face value will resonate with each other to effectively kill the decoupling network at a specific frequency (resulting, for me, in an amplifier with a nice hole in its frequency response).

[hilbert42]

Incidentally, in my post below on the MIT RadLab series I mention Vol 23. On p183 parasitic oscillation is mentioned. Also, I recall when working in the now defunct RCA prototype lab, one of the main cure-alls for parasitic oscillations was to place a ferrite bead on a transistor lead (between it and the PWA). It often worked wonders.

[hilbert42]

Excellent training, especially the parasitic bit. Trouble is somehow many aren't taught that stuff nowadays.

[baq]

Sounds like an opportunity to build a shenzhen i/o prequel