<\/p>\n

Gadgets have an innate ability to stop working at the most inopportune of times. Saturday afternoon, a few hours before my friends were scheduled to arrive for our monthly “Nasty Pirates” bad movie night, the little device I use to stream movies from my server to the television in the theater room stopped working. No device, no movies. Fortunately I have two identical devices (I have one in the living room as well) and so I was able to temporarily swap the two, get things up and running, and save the day.<\/p>\n

When I initially swapped the two devices I discovered that the dead one from the theater room worked just fine in the living room, and the one from the living room didn’t power up out in the movie room. I had only swapped the devices themselves and not the power supplies, which made it fairly obvious that the device was okay and that only the power supply had died. Sunday, when I had a bit more time, I rolled up my sleeves and began looking for a replacement.<\/p>\n

Out in my workshop sits a milk crate full of power supplies. Every time an electronic gadget dies I remove its power supply, wrap up the cord, and add it to the milk crate. I don’t know how many power supplies I’ve saved over the years, but the milk crate is getting pretty full. Digging through the crate is a bit like paleontologists excavating layers of soil. About halfway through the pile, the brand names change from Sony and Dell to Radio Shack and US Robotics. Sunken to the bottom of the crate are the real clunkers; heavy, square bricks with sharp edges. A direct blow to the head with one of those could both knock a man out and slice him open — the ultimate self-defense weapon. <\/p>\n

I own a cheap digital voltmeter that I only use for a couple of things, testing voltages of suspected dead power supplies being on of them. The old power supply says “five volts, two amps” on the back. The voltmeter measured “no volts, no amps” which I’m pretty sure is the problem. To ensure my voltmeter was still working I tried another random power supply and the meter’s digital display immediately lit up. I tested the bad one a second time and again, it did nothing. It’s dead, Jim.<\/p>\n

With the milk crate relocated to my work bench, I began pulling out all the old power supplies one by one in search of a match. Of the 40 or so power supplies I removed from the crate, three had their voltages clearly displayed in a legible manner. The rest had their specs punched into their black plastic cases, small black letters scribed into black plastic. Thus began the old man game of “this $1,000 phone also works as a magnifying glass.” I briefly considered using a paint pen to write the voltages on the sides of each one to make them easier to identify in the future. I’m pretty sure I had the same idea the last time I did this, and I’m just as sure I’ll wish I had done it the next time I go through this.<\/p>\n

As I removed each power supply from the crate I repeated to myself what I was looking for: “five volts, two amps.” Some of the power supplies in the crate are so old that I would never connect them to anything I care for, but I hang on to them nonetheless. A couple of random items went directly from the crate into a trash bin — a cable toward the bottom that I couldn’t identify or fathom how it could be used went into the garbage, as did an old cigarette adapter I bought to power a CD Walkman in my Ford Festiva back in 1992.<\/p>\n

Eventually, toward the bottom of the crate, I found two potential donors. I picked the one that appeared to be from this century and touched the voltmeter’s prongs to the power supply’s tip to ensure it still worked. Convinced I’d picked a winner, I then connected it to my little streaming box and it sprung back to life. I was back in business!<\/p>\n

The last step of this mini-adventure was to rewrap all the cords so I don’t end up with box full of electric spaghetti, put the power supplies back into the milk crate, and put the crate back on a shelf so I can find it next time. I don’t find a match every time I look, but when I do it justifies the years I’ve spent collecting and storing these old power supplies. Chalk this one up as a win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gadgets have an innate ability to stop working at the most inopportune of times. Saturday afternoon, a few hours before my friends were scheduled to arrive for our monthly “Nasty Pirates” bad movie night, the little device I use to stream movies from my server to the television in the theater room stopped working. No device, no movies. Fortunately I have two identical devices (I have one in the living room as well) and so I was able to temporarily swap the two, get things up and running, and save the day. When I initially swapped the two devices I… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13481"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13486,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481\/revisions\/13486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}