I have a board (a design of Ladyada's I believe) which uses a 2003 chip with 7 darlingtons to control a stepper motor
While looking around, I found a 2803 that seems quite similar internally (diff outside of course).
My question - could I create a board using the 2803 to replace the 2003? Or is there some internal detail I'm overlooking?
I'm asking because the 2803 has 8 darlingtons, which would let me control two stepper motors with one chip, instead of using two 2003s, and wasting 6 outputs.
If you look in the datasheets you'll see they are basically the same. In fact the clue is in the part number 2803 and 2003 differ by an '8' - because its an 8-channel version - well that's likely to be the intention.
In the early days of ICs 18 pin packages didn't exist I believe, only 8,14,16,20,24,28,40 etc, hence the awkward restriction of the original chips to 7 channels.