For those of us old enough to remember the harrowing days of the early 2020s, alongside another major kerfuffle there was a complete breakdown in global supply chains that led to the 2020-2023 global chip shortage. Unsurprisingly, this pushed many hardware manufacturers into less orthodox approaches, massive BOM changes, and hurried redesigns. One of the results of this era found its way into the hands of the bloke over at the [Playduino] YouTube channel, who was mystified to find two bodge wires in his fancy Saleae logic analyzer.

The reason for popping open the LA was crosstalk between two channels, which was bad enough that it made the unit quite unusable for the intended task. After seeing the cut traces and bodge wires he initially assumed that since he bought it used that the previous owner had modified it, but said person denied having opened it since purchasing it from an official retailer.

This was when he emailed Saleae support to see whether they knew anything. Initially they denied knowing anything about such a modification, but then the CTO emailed back with a long and very detailed confession. As explained in the video, during the aforementioned chip crisis Saleae was forced to rapidly redesign their LAs to use whatever FPGAs and other parts they could still get their hands on.

An initial prototype unit passed their internal tests, so they had a first batch manufactured using PCBs from a different supplier. Despite sending the same Gerber files, the resulting PCBs had ground fill issues that necessitated the observed rework, but due to insufficient testing for crosstalk a total of 406 units made it into the wild.

Sadly he had to return the defective unit for a replacement, making it somewhat hard to let go of such a piece of history. That said, if you want to know whether you’re also one of the lucky remaining 405 LA owners, the CTO provided the affected serial number range: 00200026245 to 00200026675 are affected.

对于我们这些年纪大到还记得2020年代初那段艰难岁月的人来说，除了另一场大混乱之外，全球供应链的彻底崩溃导致了2020-2023年的全球芯片短缺。毫不意外的是，这迫使许多硬件制造商采取非常规手段，大规模修改物料清单，并匆忙重新设计。这个时代的产物之一落入了 [Playduino] YouTube 频道那家伙的手中，他惊讶地发现他那台高级 Saleae 逻辑分析仪里竟然有两根飞线。

打开逻辑分析仪的原因是两个通道之间存在串扰，问题严重到让这台设备完全无法用于预期任务。在看到被切断的走线和飞线后，他最初以为因为买的是二手货，所以是前机主改装过，但前机主否认自己从官方零售商购买后打开过设备。

这时他给 Saleae 支持部门发了邮件，询问他们是否知情。一开始他们否认知道有这种改装，但随后首席技术官回复了一封很长且非常详细的坦白信。正如视频中所解释的，在上述芯片危机期间，Saleae 被迫重新设计他们的逻辑分析仪，以便能够使用他们还能弄到手的任何 FPGA 和其他部件。

最初的样机通过了内部测试，因此他们用另一家供应商的 PCB 生产了第一批产品。尽管送交的是相同的 Gerber 文件，但最终的 PCB 存在接地填充问题，需要进行上述返工处理。然而，由于串扰测试不足，总共有 406 台设备流入了市场。

遗憾的是，他不得将有缺陷的设备退还更换，这让他很难割舍这样一件历史性的物件。不过，如果你想知道自己是否也是剩下的 405 名幸运逻辑分析仪机主之一，首席技术官提供了受影响的序列号范围：00200026245 到 00200026675 在此范围内。