"Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)" wrote:

On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 02:58:11 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:


wrote:

And MANY of them are also totally unregulated and unfiltered. I've
measured in excess of 18 volts open circuit, with over 4 volts AC
ripple. Some are even only HALF WAVE regulated.


How do you 'half wave regulate' something?

Run it through a Zener Diode? ;-)


Zeners conduct in both directions, once the voltage reaches the knee
voltage.


You can use a single diode and a huge electrolytic capacitor (hence
the half-wave) then run it through a LM-series regulator.


Still, that's not a 'half wave regulator'.


I did regulate a very low power switching supply with four output
voltages by putting a Zener across one output. Not something I'd
recommend, but it was a temprary supply to test a homemade 1 GHz 10
digit VFD for a frequency counter I was building back in the '80s.