hams on classiccmp

Well, from the point of view of the people selling the stupid things, the thing wrong with that is simple: the cost difference isn't nearly worth it. Especially for mass-market consumer gear, almost everyone (two nines? three?) are perfectly happy with a supplied wall-wart and never have a lick of trouble with it, retiring the device long before the wall-wart fails (planned obsolescence, yay! - yes, I'm being sarcastic). Wasrranty replacement for the few cases where the wall-wart fails in-warranty costs far less than supplying a proper power supply for all units. I don't like it either. But we (FVO "we" approximating "those who care enough") will have to pay the price of a good supply one way or another in order to get a good supply, and I actually think I'd rather pay it your way; then I _know_ the supply in question. I too have some old stuff with power-brick supplies putting out voltages like regulated +5 and +/-12, typically with something like a DIN-5 connector. I treasure them. :) At $DAYJOB, among other things, we (re)sell VoIP phones, and I've noticed that they used to come with wall warts and now come with tiny little bricks with a mains-cord socket rather than mains prongs instead. They appear to be switchers, which has good sides and bad sides.... But if I want nice clean power for something of my own, I usually go linear, with substantial overdesign. Just like classic computers. Odd, that. :-) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B