Jake Anderson wrote: > I'm also wondering if it may be possible to make some kind of > nifty board that took in 3 ATX type outputs and gave some kind > of hot swapping, fault tolerance, and big power output for > somewhat less than the standard $700 that kind of PSU starts at > obviously the board would have to be PIC controlled so it could > chop between power supplies without ever connecting them in > parallel ;-> I had at one time thought about doing this. Here were some ideas I had: --- Use Allegro hall effect current sensors on the low voltage inputs to make sure they are sharing the load. --- Use .01 ohm resistors on the 5v line to prevent the supplies' regulating circuits from freaking out and wasting energy. --- Low Rds(on) logic level MOSFETs to turn individual inputs on/off [would require at least two floating 5v supplies at a few mA] --- Fine-tune the feedback or synchronize the switch clock of the PSUs --- Add a dummy load for hot spares if you don't actually want them to share the load - they need a load to regulate the output. --- So I determined that the risk was too great and I don't have enough money to experiment with everything. But good luck if you do it! -- -- Martin Klingensmith http://infoarchive.net/ http://nnytech.net/ -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.