Yeah, I have edited my post above to make it clearer that my comments were in response to the Whimsical response on their website. Conjecture, alas, is still required because Whimsical has not mentioned whether or not a current-limiting resistor was interposed between the -12V power rail and the normalising connection on the RUN jack, and schematics are not available so we can't check ourselves. Simple visual inspection of the JF PCB doesn't provide an answer either - that has been tried. So, in the absence of information on this point from Whimsical, the assumption has to be that there isn't such a current-limiting resistor, and thus is is a design mistake. It is not the first time such a mistake will have been made, nor the last, no doubt, but blaming lack of standards and other modules seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. Expecting the outputs of other modules to survive direct connection to the negative power rail of the modular case is a bit unreasonable IMHO.Dogma wrote: Have you read whimsical's reply on the matter? It has actual facts instead of conjecture - give it a read. Explains things very well
The workaround is a dummy cable - not really massive deal, although I'm sure it was to those affected so I don't mean to piss in anyone's pocket
But yeah, it's no big deal, except for those with fried modules, and there's an easy work-around to prevent it happening again. I don't think anyone is going to file a class action against Whimsical regarding this, but it may give module designers pause for thought, which is probably good.
Rather than a set of standards, a checklist of things that module designers should think about before manufacturing or releasing their designs might be a good idea. Adding current-limiting resistors to any inputs that are normalled to the power rails would be on such a list.
I guess this is one of the reasons software is spreading throughout our lives.
