Case and Power Supply

January 20th, 2024

I built the case out of mahogany. Being a woodworker of considerable incompetence, I kept the design simple, and I managed to keep most of my saw cuts fairly straight. 



In those days, we expected that our computer system would have to grow over future years (we had no idea how quickly our equipment would be rendered obsolete), it was important to provide plenty of room for future boards, plenty of power for those boards (they ate a LOT of power), and plenty of fan power to cool all that equipment.

Hence I built my power supply with plenty of extra capacity. However, without a background in electrical engineering, I could not calculate the effect of the current load on the transformer’s output. I therefore purchased a transformer with multiple outputs. 110 VAC went in, and I could tap anything between 95 VAC and 60 VAC for output. This would give me plenty of flexibility. However, I was still confused over the difference between peak voltage and RMS voltage under load, so I ended up buying a second transformer, and feeding the output of the first transformer into the input of the second transformer;