Motherboard 5V

[cj]

Anyone know where there's a place on the bottom side of a VA0 motherboard to pull 5 volts from? Thanks.

[zyrobs]

There are plenty of places, but you should be using a multimeter to find one.

[alf]

CD drive uses 5V from motherboard, so using multimeter check the connectors that connects CD drive to motherboard, one of them should carry 5V.
You can do it by powering ON the saturn and measuring the voltage. Or there is also a way to do a continuity test using multimeter, this method assumes that you know which pin on power supply is 5V output and using multimeter continuity test you are looking for the same signal on the motherboard.

[zyrobs]

Using the continuity tester is safer, it's what I do (you can find +5V lines that way without poweruping up the machine).

The CD Drive connector may be too far for what he needs the +5V for, however. I'd check any nearby capacitors - on many board types there are even some unpopulated ones which are very nicely suited for modding.

[cj]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I was feeling too lazy to reassemble to test, but then again I completely overlooked doing a continuity test. That would be the easiest. It's to feed a toslink s/pdif and hex buffer inverter for digital audio out. I can't stand anymore noise coming from analog via scart. A long over due mod, and I'll let you guys know how I go.

[zyrobs]

Official SCART cables, especially the model 2 ones (with the normal scart dongle), have very good shielding and I only get extremely minimal buzzing with those. Of course, you can't use them on NTSC machines, unless you mod the a/v out or solder your own 10-pin end on the cable (which I had to do on a few broken cables).

But yeah, digital output is way better. I plan on doing it too; I'd need to get an amplifier first however.

[mick_aka]

I should really do this to my modded console, if only to make use of the S/PDIF input on my surround amp.