Switchers vs. linear PSU's

Let me guess, the 78xxs and LM's were about 25 years old. We'll see how those switchers are in about 20 more years.

Also, a poorly designed/engineered (electronic design, COOLING) linear PSU will of course be worse than a good designed/engineered switcher.

I'm a collector, and for me it's different for you of course. I want to keep the games as original as possible and that includes the PSU.

However, my experience with PSU's is based on my work in fire alarm systems. F.I. we had a failing auxialiry switching PSU. because it was overloaded or maybe even shorted, the PSU switched itself off, but turned on again, again noticing the short and switching off again etc. etc. etc. This happened at a rate of 2 per second. The result that there were several parts almost burning. Would have been a blast to see a fire alarm START a fire.

I do admit that IMHO this is a design error by the manufacturer of that PSU, it should have been tested thoroughly for things like this happening in the field. There should have been some fuse or other device permanently switching the PSU off. Still, these are the things I don't really like about switchers. Because they exist of so many parts, that are also VERY stressed by the high switching frequencies I still believe they will fail earlier than linear one's. Just MHO.

Neil Bradley schreef:
>> I trust good old linear PSU's 100x more than any switchers.
>
> Run an arcade with 90+ games on 14+ hours a day, every day, and you'll most likely change your mind. I've replaced many 7805/7812, LMK317s and LM323s, some more than once, yet so far (in about 5-6 years) I've only had to replace one bad (inherited) switcher. It's especially bad on the WPC era of Williams pinball machines for some reason.
>
> -->Neil
>
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> C. Neil Bradley - EVERYBODY KERNEL PANIC!
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Received on Fri Oct 9 18:44:32 2009