On Saturday, 17 October 2015 21:27:28 UTC+1, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Scott M writes:

Yes, because everyone has rescued the old AT power supplies from their
386s and kept them for 20 years.

The design of most AT PSU's resulted in lack of regulation of the
12V supply unless there was a reasonable power draw on the 5V rail
too, much more than disks will draw. This was sometimes bad enough
to cause problems with the disks. The usual way around this was to
leave the old motherboard connected to the supply too, when reusing
an old AT system as a disk enclosure. Not efficient, but then AT
PSU's weren't as efficient as any modern PC PSUs anyway.

Much better would be to buy an external disk enclosure. Single ones
will usually have a 12V (or higher) wall wart, and a tiny switched
mode PSU in the enclosure to generate 12V and 5V for the disk.

which brings us back full circle to the problem the OP is trying to get away from.

It's the same old isn't it, wanting a good reliable psu but wanting to pay chinese prices. Maybe look at chucked out wallwarts to find good brand 12v & 5v ones.


NT