Lamar Owen wrote: > On Wednesday, July 06, 2011 05:23:36 PM John R Pierce wrote: >> On 07/06/11 2:07 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote: >>> This part of the thread is about DC input ATX power supplies, > >> ah. thats not what is commonly referred to as 'the ATX connector', so I >> was confused. > > If you looked at the power supply Ljubomir previously linked to in the thread (not the PowerStream unit, but the picoPSU one), you'd see that that particular DC input power supply is built on the ATX connector itself and has no separate mechanical case. And gets 160W output power; which is excellent, for an 'on-connector' power supply. The whole supply is not much larger than the ATX connector itself; seriously, go look at this little gem. > > At that point you could put a 12V power supply and a sealed lead-acid battery inside the PC case where the PSU normally goes..... you'd just have to make sure you add a schottky diode in series, since this picoPSU requires regulated 12VDC input and has overvoltage protection set around 13.0 to 13.5 volts (lead acid float voltage 13.8 typical). A 13.5 volt dry cell string and a 13.5 volt regulated power supply with a pair of 1.5V drop power diodes preventing the dry cells from charging would also work, and that sort of arrangement would indeed be a 'torch' battery (common usage here is 'flashlight' rather than 'torch').... and that would fit the needs of the OP. > > The PowerStream unit can work with unregulated 9-18 volts input, and would be more suited to raw battery input. Again, a diode isolator (similar to an automotive accessory battery isolator diode set) would be required if non-rechargeable batteries were to be used as the backup. > > Speaking of, I actually have some old Mirapoint rackmounts, running CentOS of course, that have built-in UPS's and redundant PSU's; haven't been able to figure out whose UPS so that I could use them with apcupsd. Well, it is not viable to run PC of the batteries (for long), but hooking it up directly to the battery of the UPS (so UPS charges that battery) is what I intend to do (There is nowhere to purchase them in my country yet :-( ). Ljubomir