Voltage Blaster ISA card -5V Converter

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[necro_ware]

"This blasts you through a negative 5V barrier!" Marketing LVL 80 :D I see it standing on the boxes in the electronics stores, selling this part for only 99$.

Thank you for kind words. Was fun to make it happen. A simple but useful part and I am already using it in one of my retro builds with Pico PSU, which also doesn't provide -5V.

[MarcoGPUtuber]

The voltage blaster is what I call my athlon XP that went up in smoke...

[adamsfusion]

This is a very neat project. I've in the past wired up -5V regulators on project proto cards that are all but gone nowadays. There's a few improvements I'd make to the design, for me basically:
* Remove every pin that isn't power input or output, and expose the FR-4 on the card edge. This has no functional purpose, it's just a thing that pleases me specifically.
* Remove the mask from beneath that -5V regulator and make sure it's directly sunk onto the ground plane. Normally the regulator is barely used, but some cards that have large banks of -5V memory can put pressure on that regulator. While the heat dissipates fine even in those conditions, you could probably squeeze a few more years of life out of it. It's a free upgrade, basically.
But yeah, no idea why nobody thought of this before. This is a really really handy solution to a fairly common problem.

[chu-icehugehard]

That's really neat. An "interposer" version that stays between the PSU and ATX power port will be better, because it doesn't occupy an ISA slot.

[Schlomoe]

Wow, a clever solution and it is so simple! I’m sure more than of few of us are wondering “why didn’t I think of that!”

[Sinthrex]

No freaking way... This is such a simple yet clever solution for addressing the lack of -5V. Outstanding job!

[Edman_]

That's amazing. I've been trying to obtain the ATX to AT converting cable bundle with -5V capability for ages and with no luck. This is a pretty nifty invention. Thanks!

[MarcoGPUtuber]

Philday is my favourite day of the week!

[DimondDud]

Phil and friends here to make retro pc life easier for all of us yet again. Your channel and website are magically useful for beginners in the retro pc space.

[dennisp.]

This is incredibly useful for late Pentium or Pentium II machines in an ATX format. I had a hard time finding an NOS ATX 1.0 power supply that has -5V in my last build. The price differential and peace of mind factor that a new power supply brings make it well worth it. Such a simple idea. In many boards that have a shared PCI/ISA slot you wouldn't even lose the use of a slot.

[evergreengamer]

wow this is pretty neat, im still shocked how support in the retro community has grown

[xeruffurex]

I haven't ran into this problem myself, but the idea of -5v has puzzled me in the past, ans this video has helped to explain its use.
thanks.
liked and shared

[SumeaBizarro]

I read just the words "Voltage Blaster" and was thinking why would anyone make a USB-Killer but ISA for retrocomputers until the video explained how much smarter and useful this thing actually is, and pointing out funny thing about computer standards and their evolution over time and how creatively you can work around those by using the same open standards or past and future.

[armorgeddon]

Great invention and especially fantastic to release it under a public domain license! Thanks very much to everybody involved!

[GameplayandTalk]

Phil, you are a godsend to the retro computing hobby. Thanks for all that you continue to do!

[ruthlessadmin]

Found this on Necroware's channel first and you got a new subscriber out of the deal. Very cool project that I didn't even know I needed (but would have found out the hard way in a few days). Got lucky to find this in time :)

[jcrewkidd]

These are the solutions that retro tech sorely needs. Keep up the good work and nice to see people are working to solve issues that exist now when using retro hardware. Your channel is one of the best I have ever come across. Thanks for the great work!

[cybercat]

Hi Phil
May I suggest one small revision change:
Unmask the copper below the LM7905 so as to use the rest of the boards copper surface layer as a heatsink.
That way the LM7905 lives a long and happy life no matter how much load it has to handle.
Thanks and keep up the good work

[lol]

Im surprised something like this hasnt appeared sooner

[jeremiefaucher-goulet]

So simple, yet so elegant. Why didn't this exists already?