Invention Lab — Powered by RadioShack®

Every hobbyist needs one of these; an ATX power supply made into an inexpensive ben top power supply. Capable of supplying a number of voltages, this simple project will be a center piece for any do-it-yourselfist needing a solution to their power needs in testing and fabricating other projects.

On a standard ATX power supply, the PS_ON pin can be identified by the green wire, number 16. When a computer is turned on, this pin is tied low and gives the PSU a signal to turn on its main voltages. Prior to activating the main voltages, pin 9 being +5VSB and purple, provides a constant +5VDC as a standby voltage and can be capable of delivering an amp or more while main voltage is off. It may be useful as an indicator of AC power or an always-on supply for small loads. Other voltages provided include +3.3, +5 main, +12, -12, and -5. Combining these will yield various other voltages that can be calculated by absolute potential.- ted

About a week or so ago i told all of you i wanted to build a portable FM transmitter, well, my first trial,….somewhat worked, but i found my mistake, i was trying to make it too simple so i could post it up on here to show all of you how to build one your self, so i built a second one, this one uses 13 resistors, and 21 capacitors, 2 transistors, and 2 variable capacitors, and of coarse an inductance coil, the coil has for turns of a 5mm inner diameter, air cored, any way this new “packed” version fits in the palm of my hand and gets around 600 meter range, of coarse the use of this is illegal where i live, so i can not use it with out a license from the FCC, it really was a fun project though, and so just to make things fun for all of you i decided to take another crack at it making another very simple FM transmitter, this one is big for a reason, so you can see each individual part, it is still portable, and is also powered by a 9V battery, but its a stone age design, lol, the original schematics i had i could not use for i did not make them, so i decided to make my own, and came up with these three beauts, if this little explanation isn’t good enough for you i will post a |how i do stuff” on this later.
comments or suggestions?

Throughout the years, I’ve built a lot of offbeat things from found objects and RadioShack parts. I wish I had taken pictures of the telephone answering machine I built in the late 70’s. It took up an entire table and was made from:

(2) RadioShack portable cassette recorders
(2) RadioShack Perf-Box VOX kits (more…)