5 V super power supply - power to the micro people

7-58 - elektor july/august 1982 The subject of power supplies seems to be of little interest since the introduc- tion of the well-known 3 pin voltage regulator ICs. However, the usefulness to the average home constructor is usually restricted to the versions that can deliver up to a maximum output of 1 A. Anything above this requires some form of heavy duty regulator stage. Regulator ICs capable of 5 A and 10 A do exist, but it usually works out more economic for most people to go straight into some form of discrete regulator. The idea of adding a power output stage consisting of one or more tran- sistors in parallel is not bad at all! For this reason it is applied, with one or two modifications, to the circuit described here. Power supplies that are insensitive to interference and can deliver high current levels to large microprocessor systems would cer- tainly benefit from such an approach. The ideal IC for this job still remains the good old 723. This IC may well have been ov...