[SCCC] Incredibly Noisy Power Supply

[Steve]

At 08:27 AM 4/23/2021, Ken Alker wrote:
>I believe that third conductor is called a "smart pin".  Try Google 
>and search on "HP power supply third pin" or "HP smart pin".  There 
>are more articles than you can shake a stick at, many unuseful, but 
>I'm sure after an hour of reading, you can find your answer (or ANY 
>answer you want, for that matter ;-).  The most useful I found after 
>10 minutes was this one: 
>https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/smart-pin-voltage-to-capacity-correlation-for-laptop-power-supplies.178875/. 
>As always, read 100 of them and see which answer floats to the top. 
>Hopefully someone else on this list who has actual experience with 
>this will submit the exact answer, but I think this link gets you pretty close.


Yup, the link Bruce provided was enlightening... and disgusting, at 
the same time. Ach, why didn't *I* think of that... a proprietary 
method of ensuring that a consumer *only* buys and uses an 
incredibly-noisy. offshore, expensive HP power supply with their HP 
laptop... What a *SMART* move, just like their *SMART* printer 
cartridges. Makes me wanna collect all my HP junk and toss it in the 
trash... except while it's still working, it's working just about 
better than any of my *other* trashy electronics. Makes one think 
"What if HP built and sold ham radio transceivers??" Imagine how 
advanced they would be compared to anything else... and how expensive 
and *difficult* they would be to keep running, too. The entire ham 
aftermarket industry would dry up and die off... at least, until some 
*SMART* people somewhere figgered out workarounds for HP's *SMART* 
circuits  8-(

>I own Santa Barbara Electronics Supply.  We are the old MarVac/DOW 
>in this area (similar to Radio Shack of the 70's).

I'm not sure what DOW means... but yes, I often shopped at the Costa 
Mesa MarVac before the pandemic. They were my vendor of choice for a 
lot of common stuff and I hope they reopen their doors before long. 
Onna my best buys were their LED strip lamps, especially when I 
discovered they also sold the special 0.5 mm power connectors (or 
whatever that tiny, special size is), I simply made regulated linear 
power supplies for my strips and hey el presto: completely 
adjustable, non-RF-polluting lights for my workbench and operating 
desk  8-D I didn't know there was more than one MarVac, however.

>I sell dozens of DC barrel connectors (most sourced from 
>LKG/Philmore), and (as I recall - I'm not at the store yet this 
>morning), one is called an "HP connector".  I usually stock these 
>and I sell one from time to time.  I never knew why the manufacturer 
>calls it an "HP connector", but now I bet I know why.

Yup. I don't rember seeing this particular style at the CM MarVac but 
they probably have it. I needed a non-standard length cable for my 
garage workbench LED light and noticed, on onna the signs near the 
demo lights in the store, a message that they could provide custom 
cable lengths on order, so I ordered a cuppla. Then the pandemic 
struck, and I never got back to pick them up 8-(

>   If you need one, let me know and I can mail it to you, or you can 
> come up and visit beautiful Santa Barbara and make a weekend out of 
> it (except we are closed weekends now due to lack of employees due 
> to COVID-19).

I think the CM MarVac has been closed on weekends since I came back 
out here in 2017. Every time I went in there, there's always up to 
half a dozen customers in there, several doing the same thing I do: 
browse the shelves for all sorts of goodies.

I'll PM about the connector.

Thanks,
SteveH K0XP