18 May
2009
18 May
'09
3:59 a.m.
On 17 May 2009 at 22:02, js at cimmeri.com wrote:
The problem with the onboard regulation is that many
of those original
regulators, though they might be working, are actually no longer any
good. Not sure if it's just age, or it's a lifetime of certain ones
running too near max, but in all the ones I've replaced, I've cut the
amperage draw of the board way down, sometimes in half.
I suspect that it's a combination of high-power use and the quality
of the TO-220 packaging back then. I recall that on some MITS
boards, (was it the 4K DRAM board?) bridging the regulator with a
power resistor was done to keep the temperature down to that of a
slow bonfire.
The early 2102-based SRAM boards were pretty power hungry too.
Cheers,
Chuck