hate to ask this...

Tat2artist · Post by **Tat2artist** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:02 pm

I want to start with a dreamcast portable. And I have seen people mention the picopsu but also i have quite a few gamecubes and I seen someone mention that its possible to use its power supply for the dreamcast. which is more effective also even after the power supply can you use batteries on the circuit that are rechargable as well as the wall plugin through the gamecubes power supply? Any suggestions would be great as im gathering all the stuff Im seeing that I may need for this modification also anything I should forsee as far as converters or resistors for the psone screen? thanks again!

Tat2artist · Post by **Tat2artist** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 4:05 am

also I found a old notebook computer around the house and its got a battery in it but its a HP F1466A Lithiun Ion Battery with ratings of 10.8v and 4200maH would this be a pretty sufficient battery for this project and even though it came out of a laptop and the charging port i assume is on the motherboard could I still charge this somehow through a gamecube power supply? in the dreamcast or am I far off from the truth of things here?

hy phrend · Post by **hy phrend** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:00 am

There are several different variations of the Pico Psu. There are ones that will only take 12v. No more. But there are some with variable inputs. Such as 6v to 24v or something. So your 10.8v li-ion would be able to power that and it has the same power output, 125 watts, as the regular 12v Pico Psu.

To charge your battery, if you have the original power supply for your laptop that would be best, but you just have to get a charger that is made to charge 10.8v li-ion batteries, or a charger that is a volt or two higher than your batteries voltage. You place this in parallel with your battery (hook the positive leads together and then connect to positive input on Pico Psu, same for negative leads of battery, charger, and Pico Psu).

For the Psone screen you can use the 12v output fom the Pico Psu with a 7808 linear regulator to power the screen. I thought I saw a how to on hear somewhere or someone linked to one where a member here showed how to use a 7805 linear regulator to output 8v as the 7808 does. It involved using 2 resistors as the lm317 variable regulator does. You can search the forums for that one.

Hope this helps.

-=FamilyGuy=- · Post by **-=FamilyGuy=-** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 1:49 pm

Just to say that the 12v pico psu can handle 11.1v with no problem. I think it needs a steady 12v only to be compliant witht he ATX specifications and run a computer in a stable state, but for a dreamcast, 11.1v worked very fine for me.

Just to help!

FG