I appreciate your replies. Thanks guys!
The 317 and I go way back. I even submitted a couple of
"Ideas for Design" to the trade magazine Electronic Design.
Now defunct, I think. My ideas were published.
You guys like current limiting or sense resistors? I don't.
Unless you can get expensive high wattage resistors with
very tight tolerances. If you work for a big company you
can call up Dale, or some other company that makes 0.1%
resistors, and they'll send over a few without cost.
Its incredibly easy to calculate a resistor value, the problem
is most common (cheap) resistors don't even come close
to their nominal value. Heat is the number one problem.
As soon as current starts to flow through a resistor they
begin to drift, at least the cheap ones do. How much they
drift depends on how hot they become.
You can use a MOSFET as a high current variable resistor.
The only problem is controlling the gate voltage. If its not
controlled with great precision you're in trouble.