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Re:Reverse-engineering a vintage power supply chip from die ... by kevin_thibedeau on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @04:54PM (#28227005)
Before switching ICs became ubiquitous it was common to roll your own with an 8-bit micro. It isn't cost effective now because of the additional external components, board area, and NRE you'd need vs the single chip solution.
Re:Reverse-engineering a vintage power supply chip from die ... by markrages on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @06:23PM (#28227909)
I was actually looking into that this week due to chip shortages... it is not cost effective, but if the alternative is sitting and waiting a year for the specialized switch controller to become available again, that NRE doesn't look too bad.