RE: Asty power brick question..

I know this is going off topic, but someone might find it interesting.

I recently restored a UK battlezone. It had a normal looking multivoltage
power brick. But becuase it was heavily rusting, I decided to pinch the much
cleaner looking power brick out of a USA battlezone that was otherwise going
to get scrapped due to bad wood damage.

WHat was interesting is that the USA multi voltage power brick looked near
identical, but in fact the big 15 pin output block going into the loom had a
very different pin spacing and theres no way it would plug into the UK loom
plug. I then checked the schematics and found the the wiring into that USA
15 pin plug was the mirror image of the UK one, and before anyone says it
.... i wasnt getting confused with top down/underneath viewpoints !

To solve the problem I used a molex pin extractor tool, pulled out all 15
wires, mirrored them over, and inserted them in the UK power bricks molex
block, and of course used a brown wired voltage selector plug. Sounds
mighty odd, but it worked just fine.

I just found it really weird that the two UK and US power bricks had
incompatible 15 pin blocks.

arch

>From: Malcolm Mackenzie <maxstang@sbcglobal.net>
>Reply-To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
>To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
>Subject: RE: VECTOR: Asty power brick question..
>Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 09:50:45 -0700 (PDT)
>
>The one in the picture you posted looks just like my stock Ateroids power
>block. As the other guys said, the US manual shows the multiple plug,
>zipped together like that. I think yours is original. -Malcolm
>
>A Maclean <amremote@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Based on experience, alot of early US made atari cabs had single voltage
>power bricks wired for 110v, with no options on other voltage input. Later
>cabs did have the multi selector version, and all european built cabs had
>the multi selector version.
>
>As far as I can recall, the transformer in the US single voltage bricks can
>still have its primary directly re-wired for 240v input, but you need to
>look at schematics to check and I dont have them to hand.
>
>arch
>
>
> >From: "Pinx"
>
> >Reply-To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
> >To:
> >Subject: VECTOR: Asty power brick question..
> >Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:16:45 +0100
> >
> >Hi peeps,
> >
> >this one is aimed at our U.S. brethrens..
> >
> >I have just bought a U.S. model Asteroids and its complete bar a few
>little
> >bits (but ive just sourced those on ebay) anyway, looking in the bottom
>at
> >the power brick i see it has a voltage selector plug on it. On my U.K.
> >Asteroids the power brick has no voltage selector plug and i was under
>the
> >opinion that all Asteroids power bricks were like this. Can anyone tell
>me
> >what kind of brick should be in the bottom of a U.S. Asteroids ? I have
> >this sneaky feeling that someone has switched it out and just put any old
> >power brick in there...
> >If its the correct one cool, i can just swop over the selector plug and
> >it'll save me having to find a U.K. one. If not has anyone got a U.K.
>power
> >brick going spare ???
> >
> >Pick here of whats in there now : http://stickycarpet.com/pinx/bits2.html
> >
> >TIA
> >
> >
> >Pinx
>
>
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Received on Tue Apr 17 13:16:29 2007