Some weeks ago, I fried a nice 486 motherboard I got in a scrap lot at first boot. Some capacitors were shorted and my ATX PSU, coupled with a regular passive ATX2AT adapter, led to massive damage (burnt traces). That short was not “short enough” to trigger the (very large) PSU overcurrent protection. The motherboard was FUBAR by the time I noticed something went wrong and manually switched off the power (within 3/4 seconds).
So, while waiting for the first batch of Universal Chip Analyzer being assembled, I created a “Smart” ATX2AT Converter, featuring fully-programmable electronic fuses. I also added a small OLED display for monitoring purpose, a -5V regulator to regenerate that missing voltage (required by some sound cards) and some additional filtering capacitors. The project will ultimately be open-source and can be adapted for any other retro-platform that require -12/-5/+5 and/or +12V.
All technical details are available on this page: https://x86.fr/atx2at-smart-converter/
I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions about this project. 🙂
Some friends already expressed an unexpected strong interest for this adapter. If we’re only a few to want one, I’ll assembled them manually, but if we’re more than a few, I can consider having them built by a fab to reduce costs.