Robin2:
And without intending the least disrespect to your knowledge I have not yet got any sense of how much difference it would make to have an unregulated rather than a regulated power supply with the same voltage assuming both can deliver enough amps....R
I believe the whole concept of this thread is to get the NEWBIE to connect a stepper and make it move.
that said, almost any power supply will work for this purpose. and old brick that has the current, an old PC power supply. whatever. I am content on building my own, but IMHO building a power supply is about 5 steps down the road, and does not belong at this level.
suffice it to say that to get started, a power supply that has enough current should be good enough to use to get the motors moving and it is is an old PC power supply with 12 volts or one from an old laptop, it does not matter in order to get that motor spinning. once you have gotten the motor to spin and step forward and back and things look good, it would be desirable to try to improve the performance by either building or buying a power supply that is selected for the application.
as a note, the back EMF being delivered to the power supply from coil-A will be immediately send to coil-B and not stored. for that reason, the regulated power supply will often work fine. in addition, many regulated power supplies are designed to handle the higher voltage. lastly, I sincerely believe that AT THIS LEVEL, no newbie will be running high power, high current motors under a load with sufficient deceleration as to create enough back EMF to be of any concern.