Modding PSOne LCD screen - cigarette car power adapter

Hi,

I am working on my PSOne LCD mod, and I managed to get one of the car adapters for it very cheap. I have read elsewhere that you can use this to power the LCD from the 12V line of the power supply, with some soldering. Could anyone here tell me exactly how that would be done? I assume I could just cut off the cigarette adapter and splice a molex on the end, but I would need to be very sure before I tried something like this (I don't know much of anything about electronics). If anyone with a clue could give me idiot proof directions to do this I'd really appreciate it. I don't want to fry this screen!

 

Your assumption is correct.

 

Thanks Acrimonious, that gets me started. The adapter has the cable running from the voltage adapter box to the cigarette adapter, so I'll cut it there. The cable is split into two and one of the two has a grey line on it. I assume that means it's a ground line, or something like that. If I remember right, red is the 12V line on the molex. Which cable on the molex goes to which cable on the adapter? As you can tell, I don't know a whole lot about this. Any help would be appreciated!

 

The yellow line is 12V I thought but I could be wrong. I have one of those adaptors and I was thinking of trying the same thing... (project divergence)

 

Yellow 12V, red 5V, black 0V (gnd)

The grey line is *probably* gnd but unfortunately the lines are often not indicated very well (especially with cheap electronics).

 

Thanks for the info mrplow, I should have looked that up myself. What's the worst thing that could happen if I did hook this up wrong? The current would be going through the converter in the adapter so I doubt it would fry the LCD.

If I hook yellow to the main wire and black to the grey wire, I can't see how it can go wrong. Which of the black ground wires should I put on the grey wire, or does it matter?

 

It doesn't matter which black you use as ground.

The wire that ran to the center (or tip) of the plug is the hot line...the outter part of the jack is the ground. Helps protect against shorts. You should be able to tell which wire goes where when you rip apart the plug.

 

The adapter converts the 12V line to 7.5V for the LCD to use. In order to demonstrate my electrical ignorance, I made a picture in Paint of how I think I should be doing this:



The plug is the plug to the LCD. The red line is where I'd cut the cord. I would then splice a molex onto it, with the yellow on the molex going to the black line on the adapter and one of the black ground wires on the molex going to the grey line on the adapter. Is that correct? I just don't trust myself with this stuff

 

That's true IF the black line on the adaptor is the +12v and the grey is ground. Personally I'd think it's the other way around. However this may already have been covered. Usually the positive (+12v in this case) line will have some sort of stripe on it and have "positive" stamped on it in several places. If you can't confirm this, cut off the cig. plug where you've indicated (between the box and the cig plug), plug the plug into a lighter socket and use a voltmeter to test. Put the voltmeter + on the black line and the voltmeter - on the grey line, and if you get +12 (around there anyways) then you have it right. If it reads -12v (ish), then it's backwards.

Personally, I'd test if it's not clearly marked on the cable. Tracing a wire to the tip doesn't do it for me. It's not worth potentially killing the adaptor or a fairly expensive screen.

 

Thanks a lot Firehed, I'll do that. I can borrow a voltmeter tomorrow and test this out.

Thanks everyone for the help! I'll update this and let you all know how it went.

 

Aye, do that! Or if you can see which wire is connected to the central pin, and which is connected to the outer tabs, that'd be enough (if you don't have a multimeter)

 

Thanks for all your help guys! The black wire turned out to be the 12V line. I spliced the molex onto the end of it, with the yellow going to the black wire and one of the blacks going to the grey wire. Hooked it up, works great! It's nice to have the LCD powered by the PSU and not an AC adapter. Here's a couple of pics for you guys of my setup (I still have some work to do, but it's looking pretty good).

I hacked up the casing for the LCD, painted it black with Krylon Fusion and stuck it to the drive cages. I really had nowhere else to put it in my case - it just wouldn't fit anywhere else. It's a good position for it though, since my computer is beside me on my desk. It's easily visible from there.





I'll update my project log when I get everything done. Thanks again for helping this electronics n00b

 

PSone LCD molex

Hey megarouge,

Can you show me how you did that mod where you used your PSone molex connector? Was it difficult because i do not know much or about electronics. but am willing to try. If you could provide a picture or a simple diagram that would be excellent. Thanks!

 

Where can you get the lighter adaptor anyways? I found someone on the forums that can get me the screen at a reasonable price but a big power block isn't that appealing to me. Of course as it'll be a watercooled system I could always go with the two-outlet inverter method... power the pump and the screen and it would auto-relay it.

 

lolzantz - it was pretty simple. I just cut the cable like I indicated in the image a few posts back, then I stripped off some wire from the ends. I cut a molex connector from an old fan, and stripped wire off the yellow and one of the black wires, and removed the other 2 wires. I connected the yellow wire of the molex to the black wire of the adapter, and the black wire of the molex to the grey wire of the adapter. I don't even have a soldering iron - I just thoroughly twisted the two cables together, then taped it with electrical tape. It works just fine.

Firehed - I'm in Canada, and I got lucky and found one at a Future Shop. It was covered in dust and had been marked down a few times - I don't think they sell a lot of them these days since it's for the PS1. I'm really thankful that I found it - I really didn't want to have an AC adapter running out the back of the case, and I didn't want to have to unplug it just to turn off the screen. I managed to hide the block from the adapter behind the drive cages, so it's not visible in my case. It looks great and works great.

 

If you want to make it easy for you, here's a 12V car adapter to put on the PC (And a cup holder as a bonus )

http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.asp?sku=123419&cks=PRL


Please note that the site is in swedish and so are the prices. 1 Swedish Kr is about 13 US cents

 

gonna borrow a voltmeter

thanks a lot megarouge. I am going to borrow a voltmeter just to be on a the safe side and check all the connections to make sure its all set. So you just just modded it and didn't even need the charger right?

 

ive been wondering. since you can use a cigarette lighter for power with those technically couldnt you buy those cigarette lighters for your pc 5.25 bay and just plug it up there?

 

lolzantz - all I did was chop the cigarette lighter end off and put a molex in its place. It was really easy and works well.

fuz!on - you probably could do that. Might look kind of crappy with a cigarette lighter adapter hanging out of the front of the case and plugging into it, but it would probably work. It's easy to put a molex on the end of it, so I'd suggest doing that.

 

I don't think there would be much point in that really. Just means extra clutter for somthing thats electrically identical.

Cool idea I've got an AC 80mm Papst fan in the front of my machine (nicked off an A-Type Cadac mixer) and one day I should REALLY make a flying lead to plug into the PSU 230V AC outlet, because I've got 2 plugs coming out of my case, and if I forget to unplug the fan before I go to bed, it ends up being on all night cooling down the machine.... while its off