[GTALUG] Benchtop power supply

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 2019-10-30 2:07 a.m., William Park via talk wrote:
> 
> Question:
> - What brand do you recommend?

The Rigol DP700s are nice, but maybe a bit more pricey than you'd want 
at US $300. Rigol kit is often re-badged by much more expensive resellers.

Personally, I have an Atten APS3005S because it's what A-1 had in stock. 
It works, it's a little noisy, it doesn't seem to do the dreaded 
30V-on-power-up that some cheap benchtops are notorious for. It was 
under $200. It's accurate and stable enough for my simple needs.

My only real complaint - and I suspect that this is my brain more than 
anything else - is that the the coarse/fine adjust dials are exactly the 
wrong way round for me. I've not yet fried anything, but usually grab 
fine when I'm looking for coarse.

> - Amazon.ca recommends "Sky Toppower" brand.  Anyone have experience
>    with these?

This looks super generic. At least it's not from a "5-8 random letters, 
vaguely pronounceable" Amazon supplier. It's a good price if it does 
what you need it to do.

While people often recommend secondhand kit like old HPs here, they tend 
to be:

1) huge and heavy;

2) if cheap, possibly old enough to require replacement power 
capacitors. Even a small PSU has a _lot_ of magic smoke to let out, as 
we found from Elmwood's security footage when the Apple IIe decide to 
get smokey on us;

3) if old, maybe have analogue dials which are far less fun now my 
eyesight is progressively downgrading.

Whatever you get, you won't get enough (or the right kind) of DC cables 
for what you need.

cheers,
  Stewart