With a couple hours of work, it’s pretty simple to pull the power supply from an old PC relic and turn it into a pretty decent bench system for powering your electronics projects. The standard ATX power supplys that you find in desktop computers have regulated 5 and 12 and 3.3 Volt outputs with sufficient power for most small project needs. You probably have a few of these just collecting dust in the basement, which means you could have a test bench PSU for quite a bit less than the 80 bucks you’d drop for one on
eBay.
WikiHow and Instructables both have a decent howto on the subject. As always, be careful when working with high voltage electronics. Nobody wants “almost saved $80” on their epitaph, so mind those capacitors.
Convert a Computer ATX Power Supply to a Lab Power Supply
ATX -> Lab Bench Power Supply Conversion
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Funny – posting this map is the exact neighborhood where I grew up. (Brooklyn Center). The cheapest I ever saw gasoline priced there was 9.9 cents per gallon (this was in the mid 60’s). My teenage years saw the price at 19.9 to 29.9 cents per gallon.
Oh, for the good old days…
Seriously, 3.19 and 3.95 in the same city? Come to Canada and you’ll notice that the gas stations tend to engage in some serious price fixing. And this isn’t some crackpot conspiracy story; it’s a been uncovered in Quebec, and it’s made national news already. W/e, you yankees still can’t complain. Much of your gasoline still comes from Canada (moreso than compared to the Middle East), extracted and refined by American oil companies, and sold back to Canadians at a higher price. Lately in Vancouver, the price has reached around $1.48/L (which is nearly $6.00/gallon)
So, first fire up the computer, stress on prices, then spend some of your life driving 10 miles to save $2 or $3 on gas.
Buy smaller cars, Americans.