Well my little DIY project for the day was to build a VR like lee's. But I got to thinking about powering my jb3 with stuff I had around the house. I use to power my JB3 with an SLA>Radio Shack Car Adaptor with mulit voltage setting set on 4.5. I began thinking why wire a board when I can just hack this thing. So here is my latest solution. It runs on a Walmart Lion battery.
Parts:
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F009%5F001%5F002%5F004&product%5Fid=273%2D1811
(I had the older model with a wheel like selector)
Walmart Lion battery
Power cable from Lion battery
butt connectors
wire striper
Open up the car adaptor. Cut the read and black wires attached to the cigarett plug (Cut them as close to the cigaret plug as possible). Strip off 1/2 and inch on insulation. Hack the lion cable, cut it as close the tip as possible. The tip opposite of the one that plugs into the battery. Use a butt connector to connect the red wires from the cable and the red wire from the car adaptor. Do the same with the black. Screw the car adaptor back together and you are ready to go to town. If you dont use the Lion battery form walmart you can use RC batteries, but but use a female connector. Its really easy.
I took my dremel and hollowed out the old cigaret molding, so it protects my butt connectors. Just b/c I could.
Bagtagsell,
I just finished doing the mod that you described a few pages back (page 4) and just wanted to give
you a HUGE + Friggin' T for posting this !!!!!!!
It only took about 15mins to do, and it worked like a charm.
Also, just to let everyone know, the power adapter that is in the pics on page 4, is being discontinued, so I was able to buy it on clearance for $9.95.
Also, the specs for the adapter I bought were that it was a 1.2amp adapter. I think this is probably the minimum that will work. Yesterday, I had a sony car lighter adapter just collecting dust at home, so I tried to hack that instead of buying one. It was a 4.5v w/ 1amp, but it didnt work. It scrolled through the Creative screen, then to the EAX screen, but that is as far as it went, then it turned off and repeated the same thing over and over. W/ the 1.2 amp adapter, it fired right up just like it had AC power or the internal batts.
Total cost in parts was ~$15. $9.95 for the adapter, and $3.95 for the adapta-plug to fit the JB3.
Pretty awesome since the JB3 replacement batts are ~$60/each now.
Oh, I am using the Wally World 9v batt if I didnt already mention it. Now to do some testing tomorrow w/ the Wally World batt fully charged to see what the record time length is.
My JB3 batt issue is no more!!!!!!
Again... Huge +T.
Jim