Hey all,
thought i would post the english version of a post i just left on A1k.org (the german message board). some people had raised valid concerns on my psu's and i thought you guys might like to know how this project came about and what i go through to build these.
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Hello,
About 1+ year ago i found some of my old commodore power supplies were failing and began to look for a alternative. My machines are all desktop cased and i did not care for the large atx conversions. I was in search of a small power supply with more power than the stock one. I priced the psu i offered originally in small quantity,but the price was so high ($100+ ea) that it was not cost effective,so i eventually found a vendor that had a large lot (100 psu) of new surplus power supplies for an affordable amount.
I bought the entire lot of 100.this was around august 2010.
After this i was on the hunt for the elusive 5 pin square dins and found about 25. I built some prototypes and tested them for about 4 months under many conditions and loads(I have 33 amiga's here) of which 8 are my test machines with many different accelerators and addon boards,hard drives and compact flash solutions). After several months of 24/7 operation they proved to be very stable and handle the loads fine. Much of my testing was done in my workshop here in texas that reaches temperatures of 105F inside at times in the summer( i did feel bad for my poor 500,600,1200's out there in these conditions though!). A perfect place to test a fanless psu. After this i sent 5 psu's across the world to friends in the UK,denmark,netherlands,canada and germany and 1 inside the usa with the instructions to load them/torture them as much as possible. Two friends used these on A1200's equipped with internal PPC cards and bvision along with subway and indivision and the others had 030 and 060 setups with various expansions.In that time no reports came back of any problems (they are still running today,approx 1+ year later)and the power supplies appeared to be very robust.During this time many people heard about them and began to email me asking for power supplies,but as for the issues stated in jens post and others,i too was concerned about liability and UL/CE ratings because the modifications i made voided the rating(any modification to a UL/CE device means it is no longer this rating,and should be resubmitted with mods for approval - sadly i am a hobbyist and the cost of this would be extremely expensive and no one could of afforded the power supplies).I was not concerned about the work i had done to the power supplies because i have went through great lengths to make them as safe as i could. Using 300V+ wire rated 90c,use of heatshrink anywhere there was a bend or corner or chance for something to rub,and securing wires with hot glue to avoid hot heatsinks and keep wires contained on the underside of the board where the solder joints are.Use of 8 amp quality lighted switches (even tho this power supply will not pull even 1 amp at full load on the a/c side)All switch side connections have heat shrink.Extra glue to ensure the switch can never come loose,etc.
After almost 6+ months of thinking about it and no reports of any troubles from the test units i sent out(as well as the ones i was running at home 24/7),it seemed to me it was possible to release a hobby project of this sort.One reason was because i was building them myself,i had 100% oversight on quality control.Another reason was that much of the electronics/power supplies etc i looked at coming from china flooding our market were of poor quality with bad soldering and pinched/crushed wiring and these somehow were UL/CE listed.Is it even possibly to find or hold a company like this liabel? Sadly,i suspect not in most cases.There had been many cases of chinese wall transformers catching fire. I began to think what i was offering was of much better quality,regardless if it had a UL/CE sticker on it or not.Sadly we live in a world of lawyers and i admit this does open me up for trouble but i feel my power supplies are as safe as i can make them and argueably better than some of the original commodore supplies. Mine are fused,have overload and short protection and thermal protection.I then released the first batch of 20 power supplies (announced on amiga.org originally i think in december 2010 and sold on ebay). I stated they were not UL/CE in the original post. They sold out in less than 24 hrs and iwas bombarded with over 150+ more emails from people asking for more!..i have had no problem reports from anyone of the 20 people to this day.Many did write and tell me how much they liked them,and it turns out some people using A1200 in their Dj work really loved the portability of them compared to the original big commodore PSU. Some people have and actually bring their 1200's and 600's with them on trips between the usa and uk liked the multivoltage capability. With the good feedback from people,i decided to go ahead with the project and search for more din connectors but sadly none were available. My only choice was to have a production run of 5 pin square dins made to complete my project which was costly but allowed me to complete the remaining 60~ power supplies. Sadly it takes me almost 2 hours to complete each power supply and profit is almost non exhistant and its a large amount of work for one person.I guess i do this out of love for my amiga,it's certainly not about the money,because i am lucky to make $2/hour-hehe. My intention was not to decieve anyone. I did not intend to "DUMP" anything on anyone.I simply weighed the risks and made a decision to bring these to other amiga people(if they so choose to buy one).I feel good about the decision,and i personally test EVERY single power supply on my own equipment for a 24 hour burn in. I do this because the thought of damaging someones amiga is horrifying to me and i would rather risk my own(in response to someone asking if would replace a damaged 060 board etc). this testing ensures i will not damage anyone machine. I do this because when i send one out the door "I" know it works 100%. I have invested a incredible amont of time and money to do this.I stand behind the power supplies i sell and i am only a message away if someone needs help on a.org,eab,lemon amiga etc. If these do indeed violate german law somehow,then please disregard this and don't buy a power supply. There must be room in the world for small hobby projects such as mine in todays time,no?
mike
