Providing Power to Mastercard

[colt45]

Well I am about to start to use Opencockpit's IOCards and SIOC to add to my GA simpit and have a very basic question to ask regarding providing power to the Mastercard. I have read this forum, OC's forums and manuals, Nico's site, Kennair's site and the other 737 site (Manuel's I think) and they are excellent resources which I have bookmarked for future reference.

I understand that the Mastercard needs +5V power applied to J0 and that the positive pin is the one closest to the DB9 connector. I have an old PC power supply with a number of Molex connectors which I plan to use to provide the power. I know that the red wires in the PC power supply are +5V and black is ground. My question is how to get the red and and black wires from the molex to the pins of the Mastercard? I guess what I am looking for is the smaller connector that would run from the molex to the pins. There is one in my old PC that is already attached to a molex but in order to fit it on the pins it results in putting the black wire (ie. ground) to the pin closest to the DB9.

I know this is a very basic question but I am stumped as to how best to make this connection before I get any further.

Thanks.

[colt45]

Thought I would post a follow up to this in case it may help someone else down the road. I was able to salvage a bunch of wires from the old PC I took the power supply from. Included with this was a twisted two wire with a connector at one end which ran from the power button to the motherboard. I stripped away the other end, fastened it to a red and black wire I cut away from its molex connector and then connected it to the pins of the MC and it worked. Well it did after I came across the advice somewhere that you need to short the green wire and a ground from the power supply to get it started. Will eventually add a switch to this.

I have since gone on to 'borrow' some SIOC script from Nico's site for setting the QNH on the altimeter, fastened a rotary encoder to the MC and voila it worked. Took me some time reading and interpreting various documents to figure out exactly how to run SIOC and the .ssi file to tie it all together with FS9 but I eventually got there.

Gotta admit that once you get into it a bit this is powerful stuff and lots can be done. Next step will be pulling the pieces together to make a basic transponder. After that the sky is the limit.

Cheers, Dave

[Kennair]

Good on you Dave, glad you figured it out. It reminds me of my early days with OC hardware and SIOC, a damn lot of head scratching and trial and error, but as you've already discovered, a lot of satisfaction (eventually!) and huge scope due to its flexibility. That's part of my inspiration for putting up a few English tutorials to help others out.

Ken.

[colt45]

Thanks for the words of encouragement Ken. Thankfully sites like yours exist to help people put the pieces together. Still waiting on my input/output boards to arrive and then I will get into this full bore. Really want to tackle the GA transponder project and add on from that. Found a pretty good SIOC script at the OC forum to help me through that.

Cheers, Dave

[Kennair]

Hi Dave, I know you said you've already purchased your in/out boards and I did the same recently for my second Mastercard (I built my own for the first Mastercard but never been happy with the result), however I came across Claud Keiffer's new A320 site where he has made his own, very simple, in/out connector strips (scroll down to the bottom of the linked page). I recommend anyone using OC boards to consider utilizing this very simple and much cheaper alternative to the factory in/out boards. The question is, "Why didn't I think of that?????"

Ken.

[colt45]

Ken,

Tried to find the strip connectors on the link you provided but no luck. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Dave

[Kennair]

Not sure where you might get them in Canada but they should be a fairly standard electronics hobby component. HERE is a link to one of my suppliers here in Australia, at a pinch you could probably buy them online from here but I'm sure there's a local one near you.

Good luck,

Ken.