The Great Search: 12V to 5V 2+ Amp buck converter #TheGreatSearch #digikey #adafruit @DigiKey @adafruit

This week (video) we’re working on reviving our old floppy hacking projects by making a development board that will let us connect to various old-school disk drives to either control or emulate them.

These devices used lots of motors and solenoids to spin and eject the discs, so we will need to be able to provide them with a good amount of current.

For 3 1/2″ floppy drives, 5 Volts at 1 Amp or so is not unusual, and we expect larger disk drives may need even more power. For the other motors, we’ll want to have a 12 V power supply input, so we need to convert 12V to 5V, and at these currents, an LDO like the 1117-series will have to dissipate way more heat than we’d be able to get rid of – that’s when a buck converter is a great alternative.

Let’s find a powerful and affordable converter that can provide 2A or more.

See the chosen part on DigiKey

See episodes of The Desk of Ladyada in the playlist here and other Great Searches in the playlist here.


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