Lpc2000

Hi All

we are using the LPC2106 to read some serial data (among other 
things) from an external device (about 5" away via flat band cable 
in the same equipment driven by 3V3).

During the development we noticed that a couple of prototypes 
stopped working properly and the ports seemed to have been destroyed 
(we couldn't toggle them any more). "May be we applied a high 
voltage or something we decided and, after changing the chip, forgot 
it.

Now we have manufactured about 1000 pieces of equipment and have 
been suprised with the high failure rate in the test. From the 
errors associated with reading the data from the external chip we 
have a high percentage due to failure of ports in the LPC2106 (2..3% 
of batch) - either they don't work or we can measure a low impedance 
short circuit to ground.

We can assume it is not due to handling because their production is 
at a quality production company.

There are a few hundred in the field and we don't know of failures 
after leaving the test field...

There are some other errors which we haven't studied in detail which 
may be concerned with other ports (used for local bit banging), I'll 
know next week once the failure causes are known.

Has any one experience or details about this type of failure or 
possible causes? There are no high voltage involved, the chip it 
reads data from is 3V3 and required only a few uA so what can be 
doing the damage???

Regards

Mark Butcher

www.mjbc.ch