I was looking at an early 80s vintage music centre yesterday looking for what might be popping the fuses, so I'm looking for anything unusual, and then I saw a transistor with what looked like the base leg had been cut short and soldered to either the emitter or collector.
Thought... that can't be right, so I found the schematic in the service manual, and in that spot it showed a zener diode.
So a quick google later and I find out that you can in fact use an NPN transistor as a zener. Interesting!
My questions are:
Thought... that can't be right, so I found the schematic in the service manual, and in that spot it showed a zener diode.
So a quick google later and I find out that you can in fact use an NPN transistor as a zener. Interesting!
My questions are:
- Was this primarily done for cost reasons?
- Is this a cheap and nasty alternative? Or is it a perfectly valid option for most uses?