Thread Links Date Links
Thread Prev Thread Next Thread Index Date Prev Date Next Date Index

RE: current limit on 48 VDC




Folks-

I have opinions on a couple of things that have washed by this morning.

1. Bob, as does Rick, I disagree with your assertion that 350ma was not our 
intention as a worst case number. Most of the discussion that I recall has 
said 350 ma max. I read that as 350 ma +0% -?% with the minus tolerance yet 
to be determined. I do think that our 48 volts is not 48 volts worst case 
either way. We haven't settled on a number for that yet but I have bee 
using +/- 8% in the meantime.

2. In the discussion about using a PTC for current limiting it should be 
obvious but is worth pointing out that the secondary safety device comes 
into play only when we have a downstream failure. Since the device is 
broken the interest at that point is all safety. We can reasonably use a 
non-recovering device such as a fuse since the beast will have to go out 
for repair or replacement anyway.

3. We haven't even started talking about what it means if we say "350 ma 
max". What that means in terms of obligations on the source to provide a 
current limit at that level and what the time constants associated with it 
are. One thing is clear to me is that the sink must be able to come up with 
a current limited inrush where there actually is a hard current limit of 
350 -?% ma. We did some work on this when we revisited the spec for the 10 
Mb/s AUI (Ref: 7.5.2.5 see the cautionary text in the 2nd half of the 
paragraph, also 10.4.2.2)

Geoff