> On Digikey and only if are made by Linear Technology...

Alas no. eg the very nice low Iq, very low dropout, albeit only 50 mA 
LM2936 is never "well priced" in my experience.
If you can show me anywhere where they ARE well priced I'll buy a 
small barrel full :-).

eg using www.findchips.com , 9 of the 20 sellers had LM2936s. Of those 
who listed prices the cheapest price was $US0.9012 in 10,000 quantity 
(!) and the seller was, drum roll 
..................................... !!!, Digikey.

Comapring to the 78L05 showed what we'd LIKE to pay.
Best price from the 16 who had them in stock was about $US0.10/1000.
The lowest I could find was $US0.079  *BUT* you'd have to buy 96,000 
of them. And that price was from Digikey.

The AIC1722 is as good generally, better in some ways and somewhat 
worse on Iq. At $US0.15/?1000? in Taiwan it beats the LM2936 hands 
down on value for money.

> However 0.2V dropout at 500mA is a challenge for any discrete LDO.

Indeed. Although it's hard to see why.  That's equivalent to 0.2/0.5 = 
0.4 ohms. Getting a FET to better that is trivial. Getting a bipolar 
transistor to better that is entirely doable. But few do so in LDO's. 
The AIC1722 is rated at 300 mA and the graph shows 380 mV drop at 300 
mA. Which is very good if not actually excellent.


        RM


        >> 
http://www.metatech.com.hk/datasheet/aic/low_drop_regu_pdf/Aic1722.pdf


-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist