Jonpro03 Posted January 29, 2011 Report Share Posted January 29, 2011 I know it's a shot in the dark, but I need help with this. I'm the cheapest guy you'll ever meet. So spending money on a DC to DC power supply for my carputer is not an option for me. Why buy it when I can build it? So I've spent a couple of weeks in multisim building circuits, and I can't get anything reliable. Plus I have to account for the fact that voltages in a car can range form 10-14 volts or whatnot. So my next thought was to just add 12V from the car to the point on the power supply after the rectifier. So I started researching power supplies. Then I found this: http://reference.findtarget.com/sear...ower%20supply/ More specifically this: Quote: An SMPS designed for AC input can often be run from a DC supply (for this would be ), as the DC passes through the rectifier stage unchanged. It's however advisable to consult the manual before trying this, though most supplies are quite capable of such operation even though nothing is mentioned in the documentation. However, this type of use may be harmful to the rectifier stage as it will only use half of diodes in the rectifier for the full load. This may result in overheating of these components, and cause them to fail prematurely. Now, I've heard this before. Simply run the 12Vdc to the AC input of a regular PC powersupply. It sounded retarded to me when I heard it. Then I learned a little more about it and now I'm curious. I understand why the diodes (I believe Zener) would burn up, and it's no problem for me at all to replace those with some more appropriate ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BXX Posted January 29, 2011 Report Share Posted January 29, 2011 Dude, hit up ebay and get a M2-ATX psu before you end up frying your carputer mobo or burning the car down to the ground. Remember, even if you get some makeshift psu to work, you gotta figure out proper startup and shutdown controllers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Venom Posted January 29, 2011 Report Share Posted January 29, 2011 Dude, hit up ebay and get a M2-ATX psu before you end up frying your carputer mobo or burning the car down to the ground. Remember, even if you get some makeshift psu to work, you gotta figure out proper startup and shutdown controllers. x2. Why even deal with that headache? Buy the M2-ATX. Its what I use and I love it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonpro03 Posted January 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2011 Thx for the non-help guys. Maybe you missed the 1st paragraph. And I don't need a startup or shutdown controller because this computer is embedded (starts with the car and powers off with key off) oh and... Its FUN! I'm hardly concerned about burning up the power supply or the motherboard. They are both about 15 years old and i've got a shit ton of them. Ok... back to what I'm working on. After some more research, I would need to input about 210Vdc in order for this to work. So my objective now is to input my 14Vdc right before the output filter coil. I just need to figure out where exactly that is on my power supply. So right now I'm getting readings with my DMM while the supply is running. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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