Power Supplys Attempt (2)

Tom Cloud cloud at peaches.ph.utexas.edu
Fri Apr 4 00:16:47 GMT 1997


>>  have you considered using a standard PC power supply.  They
>>  cost about $30.  All you need to drive it is either 120VAC
>>  or about 160VDC.  IOW, instead of trying to build everything,


>Yes, that would be an ideal situation, for I have a large box of PC power
>supplies rotting away in the basement.  However, I do have a 12V to 120V
>inverter, and plugged the PC power supply (well, the whole PC, minus the
>monitor and accessories) and attempted to boot the PC.  Both the Inverter and
>the PC powersupply got real hot.  I know the inverter was being used over its
>small puny limit, so that made sense why I could cook on it, however the PC
>power supply also overheated.  Worked fine on AC.  I had *guessed* its one of
>two things... the AC inverter I had doesn't put out a sine wave, but possibly
>a square wave and the PC power supply didn't like it, or as the inverter got
>hot, its regulation drifted into space.

most likely it's because the inverter puts out square wave, as you
suspected ...  if you were to put an isolation xfmr in between,
it might clean up the waveform enough for it to work .... still
think getting the 160 VDC might work ??  (then again, maybe
not, you'd have to jack all that power ... 250W at 12 volts
is over 20A ... and then have it reduced back down)


>Being that I'd like to embed the entire PC somewhere, I'd rather not use a PC
>power supply, but in this case, reinventing the wheel so to speak will allow
>me to make the board small, compact, and shove it deep onto the firewall

I don't think you're going to be able to make anything any
smaller than's already inside that big ugly PC supply box


>BTW, do you know of any websites offhand
>that might have such a schematic?

no

Tom Cloud <cloud at peaches.ph.utexas.edu>




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