AVR-Chat

On Feb 13, 2004, at 4:34 PM, Al Welch wrote:

> I use Liner Techs SwitcherCad (free to download and use) to simulate 
> the
> power supply. It seems to work great for this. It does make a great 
> deal of
> difference when you select a low ESR cap instead of a cheapo when it 
> comes
> to noise filtering. I just got done with a +/-5, +3.3v supply using 
> their
> spice software. I found a diode that was being abused by looking at the
> current flowing in that part using SwitcherCad. I have been using their
> regulators for a number of years and am very satisfied with them. They 
> seem
> to require fewer parts to get the job done.

These were linear regulators and not switchers.  They required tantalum 
(expensive) and not conventional electrolytics.  Their stability was 
not good without tantalums.  Just seemed a bit extreme to me...

If you want to do serious switcher work, take a look at Ridley 
Engineering's Power 4-5-6 software.

Mike