I made a mistake and destroyed my old multimeter.

It’s a 30+ year old multimeter, and it had become very dirty because of all the dust it collected while I used it in a home renovation project, years ago. It was still functional, so I used it for years like that.

But recently, after discovering YouTube “restoration videos”, I got the idea to open it up and clean it.

The result was very good. Until I used it the first time to measure a 230V cable. Then there was a big flash inside the casing, and all the lights went out.

This is how it looks now (notice the black soot marks on the orange plastic):

And the burned diodes:

What went wrong? The meter also has aluminum foil to shield the electronics:

And I was not careful enough when I put it back, and it shorted the 2 connectors:

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