Ignoramus28169 wrote:
Jon, yep, you are right. But the good news is that fridge is not
fried, is back in service, etc.

Lucky for you. We have an upright freezer that has the thermistor
starting, and once in a while
it will get into the endless start-failure mode, and we have to unplug
it for 10 minutes. Our
30-year old fridge has the bimetal starting control (unchanged from the
50's) and it will do the
same on occasion. I don't know how long it take to truly fry the
compressor, and don't really care
to find out!

This usually happens after a momentary power glitch, but on the fridge
can happen when the
cycle of the defrost timer happens at the right instant.

Jon