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Gooday Andrew,
The diode is probably there to protect the chip from reverse voltage across the pot. But you could use any run of the mill diode for this purpose, as to why they used a relatively expensive Zener is beyond me, unless they got them dirt cheap on Ebay.
Regards
Bill
EDIT: Unless you are supposed to reverse bias the diode and it acts as a voltage regulator, providing a regulated voltage of 8.2V (82V sounds unlikely) to the chip. No that wouldn't work if its in series.
Last edited by billdan; 15-01-2016 at 01:28 PM.
Reason: more thoughts
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