is there anything that can take the 5 volts that usb puts out, and turn it to 12. I'm makeing a cd lamp, and the cold cathods are 12 volts, it'd be cool if I could plug it into a usb.
Well you would need some type of buck boost transformer and it would require even more than 6 watts but USB only gives up about 2.5 watts. So you may have some problems.
having a good step-up converter doesn't take away the fact that the USB port can't deliver the power you need to keep a CCFL glowing... if you can draw 250mA @ 5V from your USB, you can only use 105mA @ 12V... which is not lighting a CCFL by far...
There was a modding article (teh macroman?) here before the Bit site change on that - basically just mount various useful sockets onto a spare slot-cover and connect up inside to a molex. I'd add an in-line 2A fuse to avoid smoking your PSU (and maybe a white LED so you can see what you're doing).
Thats probibly what I'll do, but I thought it would be kinda trick to have it through usb, meh, life goes on... lol
Could mod a special USB port with 12 volt instead of 5 volt and hook it up to a molex. Just don't plug anything else into it...
