# TiVo PSU - Technical discussion



## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

OK so we know the precise spec on these psu's. 


healeydave said:


> The specification of the Tivo Series 1 PSU is as follows:
> 
> Autec # UPS61-1004-T.
> Input: 115/230 Vac.
> ...


 I also found after a bit of digging overall it's rated 60w max.

Can anyone tell me what the 32v line feeds with just 5mA capacity ?

From the above spec we can see that both the 5v & 12v lines are near the limit with a modern 7200rpm hd's startup current. 
I'm using Seagate's Barracuda.10 series for reference as that's what I have. 
Seagate quote this as needing 2.8 amps @ 12v peak startup current, this will be worst case but that a 93% load on that rail alone.

Basically though, this is just a regular set of rails you'd expect to find in a pc ( except that 32v one, what *is* that for, the tuner section maybe ??). 
What's to stop us, space permitting of course, fitting something with a higher current rating ? 
Or how about an auxiliary unit just to power the drive? 
Yes, we must also consider the increase in heat generation & noise but still the possibility exists nonetheless.

OK I know regular "genuine" psu's are available for around a tenner or so but we also know they can be marginal, I've seen them cited as the culprit for no sound on cold reboot ( mine does that  ), boot failures & various other maladies.

That got me thinking about uprating rather than just replacing. 
There are literally thousands of OEM type switchmode psu's available on the market, there must be something that fits the bill surely ?

Hands up all those who would pay say......£25 for an uprated psu allowing you to run 2 drives of your choosing, even those 1TB Hitachi monsters  & peace of mind that it's not being run within an inch of it's life ??

*Edit:* At least one website lists the 32v line as 500mA not 5mA, this sounds like the kind of output suitable for an LNB supply or similar. Can anyone definitively tell me if this is used in a UK S1 ?


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## DaveBrown (Jul 10, 2006)

Could you leave the existing power supply to feed everything except the hard drives, and use another PSU to supply them?

I'm another one of the mugs who took advice to replace the PSU, the old one was fine: had to ditch the cachecard etc as the Tivo was unreliable with sound going off, random re-booting and that sort of thing. I would far prefer a reliable Tivo even if it's bog standard. Perhaps this extra PSU solution would be a possibility.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Actually the external drive power has been tested and proven to work if a little clumsy, see this thread:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=289340&p=3822028


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## Ashley (Apr 20, 2002)

I believe the 32v line is for the varicap tuning in the tuner.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Blacque Jacque said:


> Hands up all those who would pay say......£25 for an uprated psu allowing you to run 2 drives of your choosing, even those 1TB Hitachi monsters  & peace of mind that it's not being run within an inch of it's life ??


Yes possibly I might be prepared to pay extra for a better quality power supply.

But then why not just buy your large hard drives from Samsung which have a much lower power consumption than Seagate Barracudas and so there is no problem still in fitting two of their latest 400Gb IDE hard drives.

Also have you checked out what is the power consumption of the latest Hitachi 1TB IDE drives? Perhaps their power consumption requirements are still modest enough to fit two although I don't think you will like the slow down in Now Playing menus that occurs with 500 hours plus of programs at Mode 0!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

DaveBrown said:


> Could you leave the existing power supply to feed everything except the hard drives, and use another PSU to supply them?
> 
> I'm another one of the mugs who took advice to replace the PSU, the old one was fine: had to ditch the cachecard etc as the Tivo was unreliable with sound going off, random re-booting and that sort of thing. I would far prefer a reliable Tivo even if it's bog standard. Perhaps this extra PSU solution would be a possibility.


I'm not getting any of these random sound offs or reboots here with my Cachecard. I think the problems you are having may be configuration related. Did you configure the Tivo with a large enough swap file for the size of hard drive you are using?

I agree though that replacing the power supply has been too often quoted as the panacea for all serious Tivo ills when in general the cause of reboots etc usually lies elsewhere.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Ah yes that makes more sense, thanks Ashley.

3.3v - Motherboard
5v - mobo + hd
12v - mobo, fan & hd
32v - tuner module.

So at power up the startup "surge" from the drive is loading most likely the 12v line for anything up to 15secs ( Seagate's number ) thus the board doesn't post properly. Powering the drive from an additional psu won't necessarily work, you may need to tie the psu grounds together. That could be risky depending on the design of the switch modes.

I may have to resort to buying another psu to hack.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Blacque Jacque said:


> I may have to resort to buying another psu to hack.


Surely its much easier to ditch the power hungry Seagate drives and use Samsung drives instead.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> Yes possibly I might be prepared to pay extra for a better quality power supply.
> 
> But then why not just buy your large hard drives from Samsung which have a much lower power consumption than Seagate Barracudas and so there is no problem still in fitting two of their latest 400Gb IDE hard drives.


Because the psu will still be running at or very near it's limits & the point of this discussion was to look at ways to overcome that part of the problem in particular. 

There may very well be users who do have a marginal psu, normal manufacturing tolerances will guarantee that, not just in the psu but the motherboard too. Take DaveBrown for example, I'm not saying he *does* have this issue but having to remove his cachecard because his system demands fractionally more power is a likely scenario. Therefore an uprated psu would dramatically enhance his TiVo experience.

Has anyone *actually* measured the voltages in a running TiVo, or more importantly, who's plotted the startup with a dso ?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Blacque Jacque said:


> Powering the drive from an additional psu won't necessarily work, you may need to tie the psu grounds together.


I can confirm that with two Seagate 7200.9, 7200.10 or DB35 drives (or combination thereof) it doesn't 

Despite the fact that one or both drives are powered from an external source, the TiVo still refuses to boot properly. I suspect in this scenario the motherboard isn't getting the feedback it needs to determine that the drive(s) have finished spinning up, but I didn't know enough about switch-mode PSUs to think of tieing the grounds together 

Sounds like you're just the guy we need on this task Blacque... :up:


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> I can confirm that with two Seagate 7200.9, 7200.10 or DB35 drives (or combination thereof) it doesn't


Do the Seagate's have any special jumpering requirements ? I'm not near any of mine atm so I can't check. I know IBM / Hitachi need something different as do WD's.

I vaguely remember they used to have a "Non ATA compatible" setting with an extra jumper or similar. Could be related to the ultra ata detection & the drives talking to each other during spin-up.

O/T for a sec, I've never seen mention of using Western Digital drives in TiVo's, anyone care to comment ?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Blacque Jacque said:


> O/T for a sec, I've never seen mention of using Western Digital drives in TiVo's, anyone care to comment ?


Bad reputation for failure rate and very noisy and hot in the case of many of their 3.5" drives are I think the reason we see Western Digital not mentioned much and they only have a one year guarantee. Same thing with Hitachi (nee IBM)

Also Western Digital is perhaps the fifth of the five large 3.5" hard drive brands by volume perhaps (of course in 2.5" size Fujitsu and Toshiba also make a lot of drives though)? I don't have any evidence for that though so may be quite wrong.

Certainly plenty of people on this website still regularly tell us they are fitting Maxtors to their Tivos though but often they seem to be IT department workers who have quietly had them fall off the stock cupboard shelf somewhere as perhaps being retired or redundant stock 

Of course Maxtor are now owned by Seagate but seem to plan go on running the old Maxtor product range, product brand and production facilities (churning out their horrid noisy and unreliable drives) for the time being.


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## lcsneil (Jun 18, 2002)

You talked about 'sound problems' caused by a fully loaded PSU earlier in this thread. 

I am suffering from 'wow & flutter' (to use an old fashion phrase) on the sound on an unmodded Tivo I bought off ebay recently. Note that this sound problem happens on 'live TV' most noticeably.

I have added a Turbonet card to it but it still has the original 40GB capacity (in the form of a 25 & 15GB drives - so TWO low hard drives note)

Would a close to capacity PSU cause this sound problem do you think or more likely failing HDD?

Neil


Neil


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

lcsneil said:


> Would a close to capacity PSU cause this sound problem do you think or more likely failing HDD?


More likely to be failing HDDs as the power supply won't be close to capacity with two of the original Quantum drives (30Gb and 15Gb by the way) still installed.

Would you describe it as a helium sound problem as there is a recent thread on the forum about this (put helium into keyword on the Advanced Search under Tivo UK section) and it has been tracked to the hard drives.

If its a clicking or popping sound thought there is more chance it might be a capacitor on the motherboard or else a faulty Sky Digital box.


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## lcsneil (Jun 18, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Would you describe it as a helium sound problem as there is a recent thread on the forum about this (put helium into keyword on the Advanced Search under Tivo UK section) and it has been tracked to the hard drives.


Excellent description!  Yes Helium (I must be getting old calling it W&F) is a good description.

Thanks I'll check out that thread and get on with upgrading the disks pronto then! (which I was planning to do in the medium term anyway!)

Neil


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

lcsneil said:


> Excellent description!  Yes Helium (I must be getting old calling it W&F) is a good description.
> 
> Thanks I'll check out that thread and get on with upgrading the disks pronto then! (which I was planning to do in the medium term anyway!)
> 
> Neil


One of these drives may fit the bill if you plan to go to Mode 0 recording quality (better than Best) which eats disk space:-

www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=312836

A 400Gb drive is only about 130 hours at the top Mode 0 recording quality that you can set up via Tivo Web although is about 613 hours at Basic.

You should start at www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/upgrade3.html for the large hard drive upgrade and all of these may also help:-

www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo

http://tivo.lightn.org/

www.ljay.org.uk/tivoweb/

www.planetbuilders.org/tivo/tivo_upgrade_diary.html

www.garysargent.co.uk/tivo/hacking.htm

www.beaconhill.plus.com/TiVo/tivohacks.htm

http://www.arielbusiness.pwp.blueyo.../TiVo/HowTo.htm

http://alt.org/wiki/index.php/TiVoWeb Modules

http://thomson.tivo.googlepages.com

http://tivo.stevejenkins.com/network_cd.html

http://thomson.tivo.googlepages.com/tivowebplus

http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/?search=oztivo&x=0&y=0

www.tivohackman.com

www.mfslive.org


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

OK, I've found a couple of SMPS manufacturers who can do this sort of thing, one even has a standard model they could "tweak" to the required spec  so no R&D fees!!
Minimum quantity just 5 units  

I'm confident in the written spec from my first post except for the current rating of the 32v line, can anyone confirm 5mA or 500 ??

Pinout & connector description: I know it's a 10 pin Molex but can anyone give me a part number or some such ?

And finally, has anyone got any decent closeup pics of the standard unit ?
I'd do it myself except;
1. I don't have a digital camera ( no really  )
2. My TiVo's all nicely setup in my A/V rack


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

But what about the actual physical board its attached to and making all the peg slots line up with those in the Tivo? Can they replicate all that too?


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## Ashley (Apr 20, 2002)

Blacque Jacque said:


> I'm confident in the written spec from my first post except for the current rating of the 32v line, can anyone confirm 5mA or 500 ??


It must be 5mA. It will be used to bias varicap diodes in the tuner. 500 mA is 16 Watts


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Possibly not, after all an upgraded psu will almost certainly be slightly larger. Lets take it one step at a time & prove we can get a sensibly spec'd psu for equally sensible money.

To design a psu to comply with every physical attribute of the existing unit ( except of course capacity) would likely mean a complete new product from the ground up. It's eminently possible but it ain't gonna be cheap.

For that sort of thing you're perhaps better off asking someone like Blindlemon or HealyDave to go direct to Autec ( the original manufacturer ) & quote for an upgrade in quantity. Last price I saw for the std spec was $9 each per 1000 off.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

The equivalent autec PSU's they produce today are in fact slightly smaller, so I don't think size would be an issue. They lack the 32v supply though.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Tony Hoyle said:


> They lack the 32v supply though.


Really ??

I *do* hope you're right, that makes the choice MUCH greater only needing 3.3, 5 & 12v


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Who's brave enough to cut the 32V wire and see if tivo (inc tuner) still works?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> Who's brave enough to cut the 32V wire and see if tivo (inc tuner) still works?


Only if somebody has a power supply they are about to replace with a new one I think.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Haven't ordered my spare psu yet  

No need to cut a wire, just pop whichever pin it is, out of the Molex connector.


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## Ashley (Apr 20, 2002)

Blacque Jacque said:


> And finally, has anyone got any decent closeup pics of the standard unit ?
> I'd do it myself except;
> 1. I don't have a digital camera ( no really  )
> 2. My TiVo's all nicely setup in my A/V rack


Are these any good?


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

Blacque Jacque said:


> Really ??
> 
> I *do* hope you're right, that makes the choice MUCH greater only needing 3.3, 5 & 12v


No I meant they won't work because they don't have a 32v supply.

OTOH if the 32v is merely for the tuner & you're using SCART input cutting it probably wouldn't make a whole lot of difference..


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

The pics are great, thanks Ashley.

Tony, sorry I was obviously being particularly dim when I replied, I understand now.
I presume the replacements available from TiVoland / TiVo Heaven are from a different manufacturer then ?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Interesting post here by OrangeDrink about why the Tivo guys in the Southern Hemisphere think you can't start two 7200.9 or 7200.10 Seagate drives in a Tivo S1

They reckon its down to the incompatibility of the Seagate drives with our ancient ATA33 interface.

www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4779557#post4779557



OrangeDrink said:


> Hey Pete if you wanna join the fun try here:
> 
> http://forums.oztivo.net/indexf.php
> 
> there's a dedicated NZ forum off the OzTivo forums. *Amongst other things someone pointed out the Seagate drive problem with series 9 and 10 may not have been a power problem (as one of the mods says they tested them with an external PSU and got the same problem) they reckon it's an interface design problem that affects some ATA33 machines like TiVo. According to the mod there they've been on to Seagate and they could be addressing the problem in future drives*.


So it may be trying to commission a new run of more powerful supplies for our Tivo S1 when there are still a fair few never used power supplies for the Tivo S1 series available is not all that productive an idea.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I ran two Seagate 80GB drives in my TiVo for some time, although at least one (if not both) has been replaced by a Western Digital drive. The WD drive had the advantage of having exactly the same size as the Seagate that it was replacing. Two manufacturers who actually used the same calculation for the number of bytes within a gigabyte.

I swear by WD Special Edition drives, since they are fast, are silent enough in my lounge, and I've never had one fail. Unlike the Seagates, of which I've had several fail, both in the TiVo and in PC's. I also used a couple of IBM Deathstars in PC's for many years which never failed on me. So I never take too much notice of other people's statistics, and their personal preferences. If I did that, I would never win the lottery. 

Also, I think that you'll find quite a few TiVo owners that have run the original Quantum/Maxtor drives for considerably longer than some of the later Samsungs/Seagates/whatever drives that upgraders have installed.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Western Digital 2.5" Scorpio drives also seem be thought of as the quietest possible available Notebook Pc drives.

In reality no drive manufacturer is all good or bad and I'm sure there will be changes in Maxtor production methods following its acquisition by Seagate.

Perhaps Maxtor drives will soon be available with a five year warranty, although some revised production and quality control methods may have to be implemented first for the sake of Seagate's bank balance.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> Interesting post here by OrangeDrink about why the Tivo guys in the Southern Hemisphere think you can's start two 7200.9 or 7200.10 Seagate drives in a Tivo S1
> 
> They reckon its down to the incompatibility of the Seagate drives with our ancient ATA33 interface.
> 
> ...


Yeah I did see that thread, I've been researching the alleged power starvation thing for a while now.
I know the Seagate's can be fitted with an additional jumper for "Master with non-ata compatible slave" but I don't have 2 drives to play with.

Blindlemon tried & confirmed general non-functionality with .9's & .10's earlier in this thread but I don't know if he's been able to try the additional jumper thing...........??

Seagate Jumper pics

Any chance you could try this oh all seeing citrus


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Blacque Jacque said:


> I presume the replacements available from TiVoland / TiVo Heaven are from a different manufacturer then ?


No. They are original PSUs manufactured by Autec for Series 1 TiVos - all exactly the same AFAIK apart from maybe a few slight cosmetic differences between batches.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> No. They are original PSUs manufactured by Autec for Series 1 TiVos - all exactly the same AFAIK apart from maybe a few slight cosmetic differences between batches.


That's what I'd expect, I was somewhat surprised when Tony Hoyle suggested the 32v line was awol, but hey prove me wrong. 

Has anyone been able to try the "Non ATA compatible" jumper yet ?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

No success here 

2x400gb DB35 drives with all possible combinations of jumpers, plus powering one or the other from an external PSU or via a PTVUpgrade SmartStart delay device always results in either a failure to boot at all, or a reboot after "almost there..." followed by a failure to boot.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

******! 
Of course that solution just *had* to be too simple.

Your time & effort for trying though is very much appreciated. :up:


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## George (Nov 14, 2001)

I have to say I am always suprised about the slagging off of Maxtor drives. When I fitted my 120Gb one back in 2002 it was what everyone was fitting. It has worked perfectly ever since and to be honest even if it packed up now (which obviously it will having written this) I wouldn't be too upset at the 5 year life I got out of it.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

Indeed nearly all my drives in multiple PCs are maxtors... I use them because they've been the most reliable for me. They've all lasted so long they've been obsoleted before they broke - I've probably got some 40gb maxtors hanging around in a drawer somewhere that still work.

Had loads of trouble with IBMs (they don't call 'em deathstars for nothing) and Western Digitals seem to die regularly.. not tried any samsungs yet.

Ultimately you get what you trust. If I had to buy a hard drive tomorrow it'd probably be a maxtor. I might try a samsung (if it wasn't too expensive) but it would depend on what I wanted it for.


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## Pugwash (May 23, 2003)

I'd be inclined to put a regular ATX PSU in an external case and run the drives off this separately. They run full time anyway, so I don't think it would make any difference if you got a good quiet variable-fan PSU. Alternatively, some adapter for a laptop PSU might work? I've got a miniPC that runs off one silently.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

That ought to work in theory, but there are several downsides;

Another box / more cables to contend with.
More noise & heat.
It's ugly.
My 2yr old would pull it apart in seconds.  
Not only that but ATX psu's won't power up without a motherboard attached or a special gizmo to fake it, plus the fact that if the power goes out, even for half a second the drives would power down, thus seriously confusing or more likely bombing the TiVo & possibly scrambling the file system. Certainly it will refuse to boot next time round.

An older AT type psu would be a better choice but you still have the noise / heat issue.

I appreciate that power failure is always a risk to TiVo's & I use a small UPS on mine as I'm sure others do.


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## Pugwash (May 23, 2003)

Yeah UPS on mine and the Freeview box. Computer can crash but I must have my TV recordings 
Luckily my TV is in a corner alcove and FILLS the gap. Most of the gear is out of reach behind it.

If I still had some breadboard and wire to hand, I'd probably find a PSU diagram and make my own. I made one for a DIY stereo amp once.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Maxtor have two features that give them a bad reputation:

a) Maxtor sell a lot of external drives and most external drives have poor cooling and fail early.
b) Maxtor hard drives run slightly hotter than other drives - hot drives fail early.

With proper cooling ( 50p 80mm fan nearby) maxtors are no less reliable than any other hard drive. Unfortunately, many PCs have really poor cooling in the HDD bays... modern hard drives need some low level air cooling.

A drive running at over 45C is too hot.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

If it was a linear psu I'd be inclined to agree with you but the switchmode is far more efficient, smaller, lighter & generates less heat. You also need to consider the radiated magnetic field from the transformer. A linear psu capable of delivering say 100w output power is gonna have a pretty chunky transformer. This is why most consumer electronics & all pc's have switchmodes.

Switchmodes aren't really much more difficult to design than linears but they are inherently more dangerous with anything up to 400v dc hanging around on them. They're not the sort of thing you attempt lightly.

Maxtor will probably disappear without trace now they've been assimilated by Seagate.


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