>I think it's more trouble than it's worth. The best I can tell voltage surges
>seem to be the culprits that kill the X/Y transistors, not too much current. I
>believe current wise the transistors are highly overrated, yet they still die.
You know... Why don't we just use a MOV or Sidactor to clamp the voltage
on the transistors? We use Sidactors in our modems to clamp (voltage)
surges on the phone line since no matter how much current you run through
it the clamp voltage stays constant. Even a MOV though might be enough to
protect the transistors. I dunno how low of clamping voltage the MOVs are
available in though. (I assume we want it close enough to stop damaging
spikes, but far enough out of regular operating parameters to prevent
erroneous clamping...)
There are those gas-filled guys too (gas discharge tube?), but it seems
like you have to have some way of interrupting current to them once they
trigger (like a breaker in series)...
-Clay
Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager
_______________________________________________________________________
/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com
\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/
Received on Wed Jan 14 15:58:39 1998
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