Mac PSU Specifications . . .

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

. . . appear to be a big secret, at least as far as the 6500/5500 DevNotes are concerned!

If anybody knows the wattage rating of this or any other mysterious Mac PSU, please post it in this thread.

If we're going to be looking for ATX PSUs for Hack Conversions, a DataBase of Power Specs would help a LOT, when looking for a smallish alternate PSU! [] ]'>

I'm looking for a small/low profile ATX PSU to tuck into the sub-basement of my Classic/Projector hack using . . .

. . . of all things, a 6360 or a 6500 MoBo! )

However, I'm sure others will want to use such info, especially as comrade eeun has done a great job of documenting an ATX conversion over on 'fritter.

< Ahem . . . hint, Hint, HINT!!!!!!!! ) >

edit: I found a 200w ATX PSU that ought to work, I just can't imagine that the AppleManagementMorons™ would ever have allowed more than about 125w to be snuck into a 6500 . . .

. . . Cheap@$$_B******$!

Whatever . . . back on topic . . . let's all open up our MacBoxen™ to read the freakin' Output Specs off their PSUs and then post them here for compilation and listing them to the WiKi.

 

[~Coxy]

For the 6500 at least, working out the wattage for the PSU is easy because it doesn't have a screen!

Apple's docs suggest 220W. http://support.apple.com/kb/SP329

Of course, looking at the sticker on the PSU itself would be a more definitive answer!

 

[Bunsen]

Especially if you want to know how many watts to each voltage supply line, which is kind of important.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Well, I was wrong! It appears that the AppleManagementMorons™ did, in fact, allow another 25w to be installed in the 6500 than I had estimated above. That said, it was overage on the 5w line as compared to my 200w ATX PSU and most likely for the Sub-Woofer/Amp for which I forgot to make allowance. The Sub is probably underpowered and not all that good anyway, (they didn't make a good one, even for the TAM!) so the cheap SOBs probably DID chintz out on the 6500 PSU too! [}] ]'>

< mutters: nope, I CAN admit to error . . . REALLY . . . I CAN! :-x >

Here's the very first entry ever to be placed into the 68kMLA PSU Info Database:

Photo of 6500 PSU Spec Tag generously provided by Macjunky.

 

[johnklos]

Power supply ratings don't mean much. A good 150 watt power supply can easily run a fully loaded PowerMac 9600 with a full compliment of five 7200 RPM hard drives. You'd need a bad 300 - 450 watt to do the same.

The power supply thing is very difficult to get people to understand because power supplies have been improperly rated for at least the last twenty years. A good example is my Amiga 4000 from 1993 or so. It has a 145 watt power supply. Most people would think that it's woefully underpowered and couldn't be used to run lots of hardware. On the other hand, my personal system had a CyberStorm PPC (66 MHz m68060 and 233 MHz PowerPC 604e), a 75 gig 7200 RPM IDE drive and two 10,000 RPM UW-SCSI drives, plus 144 megs of memory, a seven port serial card (with its own processor), an 8 meg PCI video card, an ethernet card, and a video capture card.

For too long power supplies were rated based on a somewhat arbitrary peak number which the power supply could output for only a very short amount of time. People got used to this and therefore assumed that if you wanted to run an honest 250 watts of power, you needed some ridiculously huge 600 or 700 watt power supply. Part of the problem is fetishism and tiny penis syndrome, of course, but in reality a good power supply can handle beyond its peak during startup, then run at 2/3 or 3/4 of its rated power continuously without concerns such as dirty power, premature failure, or anything like that. Quite to the contrary to what many people will say, a good quality power supply will work better and more efficiently when running at close to a full load.

If you don't believe me, I can give example after example of quad core servers, both AMD and Intel, with multiple hard drives and plenty of memory which are colocated with continuous use where the power supplies are typically 200 to 250 watts. Many of my servers haven't even been rebooted since last year. They're more reliable specifically because I use good power supplies, not because I use something with a number that's ridiculously higher than the amount of power my machines need.