Voltage Regulator

While testing a new circuit on a breadboard, my good old Arduino Uno suddenly released its “magic smoke” with a loud pop and stopped working. On a closer inspection, I saw that a small crater had appeared on the 5 volt voltage regulator. The next step was to figure out just how bad things were. I powered up the board via the 5v pin from a regulated power supply and…the Arduino came back to life! It looked like the voltage regulator was the only damaged component. ...