5200 4-port USB Power?

[Grover Torbel]

This may be a crazy idea, but...

My understanding is that the 4-port 5200 uses 5 volts interally and I'm wondering if simply powering it with a decent USB power supply would be possible. Does this make sense? If so, does anyone happen to know of an appropriate place to feed 5 volts dc to the main board? I would check for myself with a meter, but I have multiple 5200s and no power supplies or switchboxes.

[onemoretime]

Those things take some serious wattage. I would recommend, which I did on mine, a power conversion, and composite video.

[ApolloBoy]

It should be possible, though you'll have to remove the two 7805s to prevent backfeed and link the two 5V rails together. I would recommend using an iPad charger or at least something that puts out over 1A just to be safe. What connector do you plan on using?

Edited July 29, 2017 by ApolloBoy

[7800fan]

Cell phone charger should work. They put out 2.1A and will be more than enough for a 5200 with 2600 adapter.

[ApolloBoy]

So just a bit earlier today I did some maintenance on my 5200, and for grins I decided to try wiring up my 5200 so it could be powered off a USB charger. To do this, I removed both voltage regulators, wired up the power jack directly to the 5V and ground inputs for one of the 7805s, and then bridged the two 5V rails with a wire.

 

It worked... sort of. It powered on, but the 5V rail seems to bypass the 4013 flip flop that controls the power switch, which means it will stay on as long as it's plugged in. Not exactly ideal. I'm sure you could probably do further modifications to fix this issue, but I really didn't want to do any more invasive work on this system so I reinstalled the 7805s and my old power jack mod.

[Master Phruby]

It is possible. I remember finding a site that sells 5200 USB power supplies. I just can't find it anymore.

[ApolloBoy]

I'm not sure how that would work on an unmodified system considering 5V is too low an input voltage for the 7805 regulators inside the 5200.

[Master Phruby]

On 5/6/2020 at 1:03 AM, ApolloBoy said:

I'm not sure how that would work on an unmodified system considering 5V is too low an input voltage for the 7805 regulators inside the 5200.

How about a unmodified 2 port system? Same problem right? I wish I could find that link.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

all 5200s have 2 7805s inside them lined up back to back essentially. Also you would want and need at least a 2A output adapter to be sure. The originals were nearly 2A as well and that wouldn't change if you keep those 7805s in there.

 

[Lynxpro]

On 5/5/2020 at 8:51 AM, Master Phruby said:

It is possible. I remember finding a site that sells 5200 USB power supplies. I just can't find it anymore.

 

That is so annoying when that happens. Reminds me of the website that detailed a project where a guy modded his CX52 joystick to use an analog thumbstick from an original Microsoft Xbox controller so he could use the joystick to play 5200 games through the emulator on his modded original Xbox. It was pretty elaborate. He filed down a metal rod to fit in the mechanism so it would work as an actual [self-centering] joystick. But I can't find one trace of the website online anymore...