12V Power Supply

[KRFinch at dstsystems.com]

If you're careful, an automotive battery charger could be used as well.
Most of those put out a rock-steady 12 volts at a low amperage, and they
can be had pretty cheaply new, or even cheaper used.  Seems like any time I
go into any pawnshop, there's one there for sale.

I'd put a fuse in-line with whatever I was working on just to be safe, and
test the output voltage before I started, but other than that it should be
fine.  If you get one with variable amperage, I wouldn't start out using
the "fast charge" setting until I was sure I needed the extra juice.

Oh, and you can still use it as a battery charger... :)

- Kevin

                                                                           
             Duane Attaway                                                 
             <dattaway at dattawa                                             
             y.org>                                                     To 
             Sent by:                  Jonathan Hutchins                   
             owner-kclug at marau         <hutchins at opus1.com>                
             der.illiana.net                                            cc 
                                       kclug at kclug.org                     
                                                                   Subject 
             09/24/2003 12:30          Re: 12V Power Supply                
             PM                                                            
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

> What would the electron pushers here recommend for a 12-14V power supply
> for testing automotive instruments?

What kind of automotive instrument?  12 to 16 volts work, so many laptop
power supplies will do if the current draw is under 5 amps.

A spare power supply from a desktop computer puts out a good several amps
which I often use.  Some people may cry about that and say these switching
supplies will not work that way, but I guess they never tried it.  The
output really isn't that bad.

Car batteries also make wonderful power supplies too from what I hear.