3 Terminated regulator?????

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Y'all.
	Ok so I've just spent the past month re-writing the mixer firmware from
scratch. The vary moment I blow the firmware into the chip and plug it in,
the hardware dies. Needless to say I went to bed before impulse took me to
the garden shed. Where upon I would have retrieved the 10 pound Sledge and
done my worst.

The morning brought a revelation. When powering it back up the system came
to life. Then it dawned on me. The mixer had been turned on all the
previous day. It was hot. The little 78L/79L regulators probably thermally
shut down. With the addition of a quad op-amp package to the system for a
balanced output, the little regulators were probably right on the edge. The
whole thing should have been under 100mA but being on for a significant
amount of time, saw them heat up just enough to go. "Ah Aar.  I'm just not
going to play this game any more." And shut down. Obviously I need to put a
bigger reg in there. A 78M at least. Should they still make such things?

The problem is that whilst I plan to totally re-design the boards for many
reasons, and could accommodate the new regs on the new boards, I don't have
room on the prototype. Vertically, horizontally, anyway you look at it, I
just can't get a TO220 in there. 

Now I know that designs often call for TO92 transistors to be in thermal
contact with something else for thermal regulation. Such as oscillators and
biasing in power amps etc. What I'm considering is getting one of those
little heat sinks from Can-package transistors (I don't know what they call
those. they're like a TO5  with a built in radial heat sink.) and hijack a
pair to try and retrofit them to the 78L/79L regulators. A kind of stop-gap
measure.

They're TO92 plastic packages so I'm not sure how effective this would be.
Whether it's worth destroying two perfectly good transistors (and all the
associated trouble I'd have to go to) in order to try and cool 2 TO92
regulators. Anyone have any comments on this?

There's virtually no air flow in the system... Am I wasting my time here?
Remember this is just to keep the prototype running. I'll do it properly on
the final item.

Thanks in advance.

be absolutely Icebox.

 _ __        _                              
| "_ \      | |         batzman at all-electric.com
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