Power Supply Adaptor

Back in the old days of XT and AT PCs, computer power supplies connected to the motherboard with a couple of flat-looking connectors, that were mounted side-by-side. Nowadays computers use more watts than back then so power supplies have become more powerful, and more wires carry power to the motherboard. A new rectangular connector is very common, holding an array of connection points.

Well, what if your old computer power supply dies? The computer itself may be perfectly good, if only you can find someone still making an old power supply with the old-style connectors, to replace your bad unit. (You might have some favorite DOS game that you still like to play, for example.)

And so this Idea involves making a simple connector-adaptor, that a modern power supply connector plugs into, and the adaptor then plugs into the old-style connector on an old motherboard.

For a really half-baked variant of this, you might also make an adaptor to feed power from an old power supply to a new motherboard, except that this would probably quickly overload the power supply, and kill it (it just can't keep up with the demand).