Agreed! I designed a DC UPS power supply for Harris using the
UC3906 to charge a 4Ahr gell cell for wireless pbx. The only
down side is it requires some head voltage for the regulator,
so it won't work well off a 12V vehicle system unless the engine
is running and then not so great.

I still have two of those Harris power supplies one runs an HT
monitoring a repeater and the other runs a scanner and a small
transmitter. The batteries are ten years old and show little
loss of capacity.



raypsi wrote in news:355e6bae-ab52-4d0e-8fde-
:

TI makes a really sweet ic for charging batteries the UC3906. Is the
greatest IC since sliced bread for charging batteries. It took forever
to charge my deep cycle marine battery like a110AHr. A straight
charger it would take a week to charge 100% it's that last 15% that's
the toughest. The UC3906 charged my deep cycle marine battery to full
charge from dead in 10 hours. It's one of the greatest homebrew jobs
I've done. I used it to charge a 110AHr deep cycle marine battery for
my electric bike. I could ride 2 days on a single charge like $0.25
worth of electricty back and forth to work. 45 miles on a single
charge.

73 OM
n8zu