I think I killed my ATX bench power supply while experimenting with making a slayer exciter circuit for a TV flyback transformer. I’ve had this PSU for years and it has served me well, I was considering trying to repair it, but I just couldn’t find anything obvious, although I’m sure some of the electrolytic capacitors were slightly bulging.

Basically, the PSU just turned off while I was playing with arcs from my flyback transformer. After checking the fuses in the plug, the breakout board and the PSU itself I slowly realised that I had probably killed it… possibly with back EMF, although I’m not certain. Using my multimeter, I discovered the 5VSB (standby power to wake the PC up) was working, but all the other voltage rails were dead. I finally tried the trick of bridging the PS-ON (green wire) to ground which (should) turn the PSU fans and main voltage rails on, but nope, not a sausage.

Basically, I have quite a few components added to my box of tricks, now. Five different transformers, two huge heatsinks, a couple of fast diodes, some power transistors and some nice inductors, there’s also what I believe is an op-amp, a TL494 PWM driver IC and also an L805CV 5v linear voltage regulator. Oh yes, and two more 12v fans to add to my groaning drawer of PC fans.

So, until I get a new ATX power supply, I’m limited to using wall-wart power adapters, and batteries for my electronic experiments.