I have designed an LM3480 into a battery powered microcontroller board. The microcontroller is currently being programmed in-circuit, which means +5V is applied to the output of the LM3480 with no voltage at the input. The regulator gets very hot during programming, so I know current is flowing from the output to ground (the input has about 10K ohm to ground so not much current can flow there).
Is the reverse current limited in some way, so that I only have to worry about heating or is it potentially catastrophic, even for a short time during programming? If the current is potentially destructive with this device, I assume that the problem goes away if I switch to something like the TPS709?
