High-side Fet driver replacement

Winbond won't sell them to you?

There's no local distribution that would allow us to buy in small quantities. If we wanted to make a thousand, we would get them from Winbond direct and wouldn't have a problem. However, our volume is much smaller than that.

Also, I haven't found an equivalent, even a rough equivalent, from any other supplier. This makes me worry that it will have a limited lifetime.

Regards, Allan

Where is local?

Digikey lists them, but has none in stock. You could call them and see if they would get some in, and how long that might take, if you ordered some. Given that their pricing is under $500 for 1064, it should not take too long for a production run to make sense simply buying the parts direct, rather than flailing around in the sharky waters of spending lots of time and money trying to find the parts in smaller quantities, unless your time is free. Sell the excess on fleabay, if you really won't use them.

SGI claims to have some, but smells like one of those "parts brokers" more than a distributor, given that they have quantities of 300, 2095,

100 and 8200 listed - so I doubt "they" actually *have* the parts at all, and by the time you get through markup, it might be cheaper to buy 1000 direct. They claim a base in Beverly, MA, USA.

Several of the more clearly offshore parts brokers have those exact same quantities listed, along with a few others. I suspect the same quantities are the same batches of parts, listed with multiple brokers. Call me a cynic or a realist, as you prefer.

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Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by

As a linear regulator, this parts function will never have 'small board area' , because a heatsinking function must be provided for the mosfet being driven.

If this is a single sourced part, and you're committed to it's use, you should be considering a life-time purchase volume as part of the cost of it's deployment.

For fan speed control, you don't need 0-12V control range, as most fans will poop out completely at half rated voltage.

RL

Can't say for sure, but it sounds like a chip for an RC engine speed controller. They use lots of variable frequency motors. The "linear" follower may well be a PWM approximation.

This particular part really is linear. However, I think I will actually end up using PWM in my design. The primary reason is that it's cheap, effective and can use parts that will be easy to obtain over the lifetime of this product.

Regards, Allan