As part of a mixed set of robot parts I bought on ebay I received this Dagu 4-Channel Motor Controller. On the back there was a trace broken so I soldered in a wire to replace it and hooked it up to the Rover5 (from the same set). Wired it to an Arduino UNO and programmed it to run a motor test. Applying power to the board, before the Arduino had even started PWM, one of the driver ICs began smoking.
Here IC U8 can be seen glowing red hot and emitting magic blue smoke.
Now the magic blue smoke is out I’ll never get it back in. Still tinkering with the board to see if any of the other motor drivers / channels work, perhaps I can use the board for something else (2 motor robot for example). I’ll be scouring the web for another board for my Rover 5.