Chips & High voltage: Connected in Series? I have 3 micro-controllers that will be connected to a battery, and I need to provide each of them between 3 and 5 volts maximum.
I have 3V batteries but they do not seem to provide enough power, while putting to of them in series would fry the chips as it busts the 6 volts max.
My question is, if I provide 9 volts to 3 chips connected in series, would current drop be distributed evenly to 3V across all chips, or would for example fry the first one?



simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab
If  you put three resistors of the same value in series, then you would get equal voltage division between them.
But chips are not like resistors. Their current usage is not constant and typically vary by orders of magnitude even within each clock cycle. See why this would be a problem?
If you have good 3V batteries that supply 3V up to the maximum current that the chips can draw, and the chips are rated to run reliably at 3V then there is another problem. Maybe you need decoupling capacitors across the chips?