12v adapters

[Sput]

Thought this might be a good electric metropol question! I've got to replace two 12v DC power supplies in my house. One has given up for reasons unknown and the other, at 3A, is apparently not powerful enough for my PVR and I'm told I need a 5A one. Anyone know of any good sources, particularly for the latter? I'm in hate with Maplin so don't go suggesting it. I'd also like one with relatively high efficiency (yes I know it's a lot to ask for that kind of stepdown, hence "relatively") - do these exist?

[Steve in Pudsey]

A cautionary tale of woe, it really pays to ensure you get the right power supply - a friend of mine has a laptop, the power supply of which delivers 19V, and an external hard drive, with a power supply delivering 12V. Both of these adapters have the same plug on the end, and you can guess what happenned.

Net result - one fried hard drive. Taking the IDE drive out of the enclosure and putting it into a PC showed that the drive itself (and not just the circuit board in the enclosure) was well and truly dead and not even spinning up. He's now replaced the external HDD with a bus powered one so he can't make the same mistake again!

[Gavin Scott]

Maplin will have what you want - but if you find them objectionable then try and get an account with RS Components. The main consideration is to seek at "regulated" adaptor - one which will smooth out those inherent spikes in DC power supplies.

You should be able to pick up a fixed, or multi-voltage adaptor for around £15.00. Make sure to check the output - which is more likely to be measured in mAh rather than Amps.

[cdd]

Go on, dish: how have Maplins wronged you?

[Sput]

I should be alright with the milli thing, a 6000 Amp output would be impressive I only hate maplin because of their prices.

[cdd]

Had no idea price started working in maplin.

[Nini]

Down boy.