Greg Mayman wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 -=> Roy J. Tellason said to Mike Ross
 -=> about "{at}%^{at}#$%^ VEROBOARD" on 03-26-04  14:36.....

 RJT> And I'll bet there are still lots of those setups with relays out
 RJT> there,  in some places.

 GM> Darn right!

 GM> Relays are well understood, and their modes of failure are
 GM> extremely well documented. You can check them as they operate and
 GM> often you can see trouble starting before it affects the
 GM> operation too badly.

 GM> Can't say anything like that about solid state stuff. It just keeps
 GM> working until one day it stops.

 GM> I've worked with computers and solidstate stuff for over 30
 GM> years, and I would rather trust my life to mechanical relays than
 GM> solid state...

I don't think it's that solid state stuff is harder to work with,  or less
reliable,  or anything like that.  I think that the engineers that design
that stuff don't take failure modes into account and have their heads stuck
in places dealing with older or other technology...

Or whatever the reason,  more often than not stuff isn't designed as well
as it could be.

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