"Dave M" wrote in message
...
mm wrote:
Will sunlight damage the electronics of a circuit board?


I stopped unpeeling at that point. I don't want to cause their
product to wear out sooner than normal. I Would the sunlight harm
anything inside?


To your question, it's unknown from your observations whether the
innards
would be damaged by sumlight intrusion. There could be a UV EPROM inside
that could possibly be erased if sunlight got to it on a continual basis,
however, most EPROMS have a label covering the window that protects the
contents. Constant UV exposure from sunlight could possibly damage the
markings on components, but they will likely be OK. Most plastics and
glasses are fairly good blockers of UV. If you're concerned about the
esthetics of the label on the box, paint it or cover it with a piece of
tape. That will not harm the box.

Let me give a real world perspective on the use of EPROM's.
I was involved in a product that needed a ROM to hold some basic logic. To
be sure that the code was right, EPROM's were used because of the neat
ability to quickly update the device by UV erasure and reprogramming. We
probably had about 100 of these for testing and debugging the product.

Now we want to go into production and the required volumes ranged into the
multiple thousands of pieces.
Two factors come into the decision making. First, those ceramic packages
with a window are not cheap. Second, EPROM's and their programming are also
not inexpensive. The best economy is a mask made ROM in a plastic package.
Here the problem was the start of cost of mask making and the delay in
getting real chips of the line.

We settled on a stopgap compromise and started production with EPROM's that
were in plastic packages. The design was frozen and we knew that erasing
would not be an issue. Then when hard programmed devices became available
the transition was easy.
You have to look at the economics of this scenario to see if the savings
are there. If you want 50 to 100 thousand of these it worked well.

As they always say "YMMV".

Charlie