Part of my learning curve was that small tantalum capacitors were polarised - with what appeared to be a non-obvious marking. Bought a Motorola 6800 evaluation kit - which had a bare circuit board and ICs only. Soldered the many tantalum capacitors on to it in an aesthetic fashion. Luckily the first one was the right way round - thus so were the rest with that alignment.
The final two had a 90 degree orientation to the rest. Murphy's eye was off the ball - and those two were put in the correct way too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
