Quote Originally Posted by mvs_sarma
Hi
what is the wattage of the filament lamps you are trying to drive with ULN2003--
the issue is with cold resistance of filament lamp and the surge currewnt that flows before the filament becomes HOT-- the driver device should haVE DOUBLE THE CAPACITY OF THE INRUSH CURRENT II believe.
It's not an overload issue, well, it is, but not caused by normal operation. It's when a lamp burns out and we get unlucky enough that the element rolls around or puddles and causes a direct short. We have done two things to stop this.

1) Changing all the Lamps with LED replacements
2) Active current limiting circuit

When I was researching 2803's "after" the fact, I found that lots of arcade games used them to control light arrays, and they too had many problems with lamps shorting and burning up the 2803. There were some pretty neat ideas on the net on how to avoid it.