Low level fault or fault low level

NOTE: I feel cheated by this “new Google Sites”. When they rope-a-doped me into converting the site they failed to mention that a) this is a one way journey and b) that this stupid “new Google Sites” lacks basic formatting features like subscript and superscript. I now know how Nancy Kerrigan felt. Seriously, my only extra formatting option is “strike through”. All of the V8, I8, etc below is supposed to be ‘V sub 8’, ‘I sub 8’, etc.

NOTE²: I have edited this post during migration to WordPress.  The above gripe is no longer applicable.

Something hasn’t been sitting right with me. And no it’s not beef with cumin sauce, extra spicy. It’s the fault output on the MIC5013. I’m sure I’m over thinking it, but I can’t help it. According to the data sheet for the little bastard, the maximum current out of pin 8 (I₈), the fault pin, is 1mA. Also, with V₊ = 15V and I₈ = 100uA, V₈ “typical” is 14.6V. The way Vic is interpreting this is “during a current sense condition, V₈ is 0.4V bellow V₊ up to the maximum I₈ of 1mA”. Clearly this is not the case.

On my board V₊ is 23.96V. V₈ is 21.89V with I₈ of 721uA. Specifically pin 8 is going into a voltage divider with a total resistance of 30.34KΩ. So my fault output is 2.07V less than V₊.

I guess I’m ok with that. I don’t really have a choice. I’m just wish they had characterized V₈ based on I₈.