Switching power supplies

[Peter Gutmann]

"Riad S. Wahby" <rsw at jfet.org> writes:

>What you're talking about is a relatively high power design, which means that
>in addition to worrying about designing the switching supply, you're going to
>have to sweat the practical details regarding PCB layout, et cetera.

Another thing about switchmode design is that unless it's pretty simple,
you're better off outsourcing it (meaning, get a pre-built one).  Back when
all you needed was a 78S40 and a few capacitors, resistors, and inductors it
was simple enough, but nowadays you can get a high-efficiency (90+% rather
than ~70%, look for one advertised as efficiency class V), over-voltage, over-
current, short-circuit protected power supply module for less than the cost of
the parts, it's really not worth doing yourself unless you need something
particularly exotic.

>Cypherpunks build circuits,

Cypherpunks assemble systems out of existing modules that someone else has
spent the time to develop and tune.

Peter.