I'd like to see something costing less than $15US that's capable of getting the information into the PC somehow and working together with a tool like that PC-Scope software to allow a third-world, or first-world observer to watch his power supply behavior during power-up and power-down. Maybe it would be useful for catching brownouts, and seeing what that does, as well, but the power-on and power-down would be a good start.

The guy in a war-torn third-world country won't be able to pay that $15 either, but a lot of people would benefit from seeing what their PSU does on their application board. Sound boards can be coaxed to sample at something like 100kHz, so considerable useful information could be extracted if one had data like that. If the SiLabs 'F12xDK or some other ADC-equipped device would do that with 12-bit samples (of which probably only 6 or 7 may be realistic in a typical hobbyist environment) the resulting .wav file might be useful.

RE