Slightly in an olinized mood:

 How 'bout to spend this time working somewhere at
McDonalds to earn some cash in order to buy real
12vDC/AC sine inverter for as little as $30?
(16 min of Olin's billable time).

Have look at TrippLite APS.

 Mike.



Roman Black wrote:
> > Among other things, since a low dropout still needs overhead
> > voltage above 12V.  Figure 1V (just a guess since I haven't
> > yet investigated this).  So I need 13V min at all times in the
> > car.  If the current requirement for the 12V portion is low
> > enough (to be determined), I could regulate 12V to 8V, run that
> > thru a doubler to get 15-16 volts, and regulate that to 12V.
>
>
> How about this idea; build a simple SMPS that
> generates 3v and has an isolated output, and put it
> in SERIES with the 12v car supply. Done right, it would
> BE the regulator and self-adjust to maintain 12v to
> the PC. So input voltage can be 8v to 15v, and the
> output is always regulated 12v. The total SMPS power
> only needs to be 1/4 the power of the total supply,
> unlike all other solutions which require the SMPS
> to supply 100% of the power. :o)
> -Roman
>

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