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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: KapnKerfuffle on March 03, 2010, 01:41:48 pm

Title: Wiring 12v marquee light.
Post by: KapnKerfuffle on March 03, 2010, 01:41:48 pm

I have a cold-cathode marquee light from Ultimarc.  It has 2 wire leads that are supposed to connect up to a 12v power supply.  What is the best way to connect these to a 12v molex connection in the computer? 

Title: Re: Wiring 12v marquee light.
Post by: Ed_McCarron on March 03, 2010, 02:02:25 pm

Scavenge the mating 12v plug from a peripheral.  Yellow = +12v, Black = Gnd.

Title: Re: Wiring 12v marquee light.
Post by: Malenko on March 03, 2010, 02:02:53 pm

hack a Y molex splitter  yellow is +12v, black is ground, red is +5

Title: Re: Wiring 12v marquee light.
Post by: MonMotha on March 03, 2010, 02:36:07 pm

If you've got a Fry's nearby, they probably have the mating connector.  A bag of like 5 or 10 housings was a few bucks, and a bag of 100 pins was I think $10.

If you don't, slice apart some PC thing you don't care about.  Dead cooling fans work great for this.  As others have said, Yellow = 12V, Black = GND.  The cooling fans sometimes hook a red wire up to the 12V side, so don't get confused if you hack one of those apart (and you probably don't want to use that thin little wire, anyway).

Title: Re: Wiring 12v marquee light.
Post by: DeLuSioNal29 on March 03, 2010, 04:50:45 pm

This video may help.

Arcade Machine: Wiring LEDs to power supply (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_H5Zu83IJA#ws)

D

Title: Re: Wiring 12v marquee light.
Post by: KapnKerfuffle on March 04, 2010, 12:04:44 am

Oh too late.  Thanks for the vid though.  I already did my butt splice.  It turned out o.k.  I didn't have a nice heat gun to heat shrink it, but the lighter did a passable job.  It took a while for the cold-cathode to "warm up" (pun... yeah intended, waiting all night to drop that one).  But it looks great.