The one below was surplus from some old thin clients I had. I started by measuring the voltage whilst the unit was intact. Then the case was split by scoring round the case edges multiple times with a sharp stanley knife. On opening it up I had a quick scoot around the pcb, make sure all capacitors looked ok.
As the wires to the lead had age hardened I decided to replace them with twisted pairs, total wire capacity could carry 8 Amps. As this is a 12 Volt 4.16 Amp power supply, I thought that adiquate. There is no space for terminal or binding posts in this, so I had a rethink and used good quality speaker terminal plate with spring back terminals. I've seen these on retail units stating up to 5 Amps current. If you get good quality ones you could go to 10 - 12 Amps easily with these terminal plates.
Mounting the terminal plate was easy, but I did use nylon machine screws, there are two internal heatsinks, whilst they might be at a low potential I was not taking that for granted. ( in times gone by I've come across heatsinks in atx units that where at mains potential) Put a piece of card glued over the soldered terminal. A test whilst the unit was in two halves, all looked good so it was reassembled. Standard araldite epoxy worked great, allowing over night drying. Tape or a small clamp does the job nicely.
As I don't have a scope at the moment, it's a case of taste it and see. No problems powering an 80 channel cb and an old tagra 25 watt linear amplifier.
Some overs later and all seems fine, current drain was just over 3.2 Amps with that load combination, voltage drop 0.2 Volts under load. So it won't win any prizes in terms of power, but for what it is I'm pleased with it. This process could be adopted to many sealed smps type units, this is what I had laying around.
I'm tempted to look for an oscilloscope, but eBay has only junk, I've got my eyes on a 40mhz hand held unit, might invest in one. It would be interesting to see ripple noise for a known load current, with any smps. Next offing will be back to big server units. Hope some can see potential in this modest offering.
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