I picked up a Honda EU2200i generator a few months ago because my old generator did not provide clean power. One of the things I liked about it was the 12 VDC output. I hooked the generator up and decided to see how it performs.Continue reading
After our recent activity making the emergency ATX power supplies, I got a call one evening from one of the hams who couldn\’t get their salvaged 24-pin power supplies to work. It turns out that many of the larger computer manufacturers use their own proprietary pinouts. In this case, he got bit by a Compaq power supply. A good place to check to see if you can make a proprietary power supply work is pinouts.ru (yes, I know it is in Russia, but to my best knowledge it is not crawling with malicious software).
Last Friday night one of the local amateur radio groups that I\’m affiliated with had a get together with good food, friends and activity. We soldered together the Compact ATX 12V board that we wrote up a little while back. There were a few people who were unable to stay and put it together. For them (and for anyone else trying this), I have put together some instructions on how to put it together.Continue reading
This board was designed to be a good beginning board for someone to learn to solder on. There are a lot of amateur radio operators that originally got into the hobby as part of an emergency communications group (RACES, ARES, etc.). This board is designed to start them down the path to the… hardware side (cue evil laugh).
![\"\"](\"http://curioussystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Emergency-ATX-12V-Compact-Front.jpg\" "\\"Emergency")
It sucks when you need 12 VDC and your power supply just died. Previously we made an ATX breakout board to turn an ATX power supply into a fixed voltage bench DC power supply. Here we present a board that is designed to be smaller and for use as a backup.
![\"\"](\"http://curioussystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Compact-ATX-Breakout-Board.jpg\" "\\"Compact")
I\’ll admit it, I\’ve drank the Anderson Powerpole kool-aid. I like them. I like the detent. I really like the fact that they are genderless. I like the fact that lots of other ham radio people use them. I\’m not that crazy about having only one supplier of them. However, it looks like their is another alternative. Tyco/AMP has its Power Series connectors that seem very similar to Powerpoles. I\’ve picked up a few to see if they are interchangeable. One thing that I have not seen from them is PCB mount contacts. Anderson does make those in 25 A and 45 A varieties.Continue reading
How many of you have or know of someone who has an old computer just sitting in the closet gathering dust. How many of you would like to have a multiple output bench power supply? Do you need an extra +12V DC power supply for your CB, ham shack or office? What we have here is a 4\” x 6.3\” PCB that has all the standard connectors needed to take the output connectors from an ATX power supply and give you easy access to them.Continue reading