16 Jun
2002
16 Jun
'02
6:09 a.m.
The power supply and its management was the least of
your worries with their
hardware. However, if your board required +/- 15, which was pretty easily
regulated from the +/- 16, which was seldom limited to 16, you'd be in real
trouble with the 12 volt bipolar supply.
Further, I'd say, though it's not "new" nowadays, it was practiced only
a
short time in the life of the S-100. I think the deviation from the standard
practices, not necessarily the "standard," was what led to its death,
actually.
If I was going to do it today, I'd stick with the ~8V unregulated bus and
use a small buck switching regulator on each card. You get all the efficiency
of a switcher, and compatibility with older stuff.
With "Simple Switchers" from NatSemi (or equivalent from Motorola/Onsemi/
TI etc.) it's very easy to do. What's really good is that many of the
electronics distributors which let their inductor selection whither away
over the years now have excellent selections of inductors - some of which
they keep in stock! :-)
Tim.