A Bargain?
I walked past the Philips CDi 450 console several times. Eventually, I picked it up and looked closer several times. I looked at the power socket several times. It seems I may not have looked closely enough…!
Anyway, how could I not buy this lovely little thing, when it was a mere £20?
Because you already have a Philips CDi 490? Shush!
Top Tip
Look at the power socket more closely than I did!
I must have been looking elsewhere, because what I didn’t notice about the Philips CDi 450 (and I have since learnt, the 550) is that it has the most mind-buggeringly stupid power supply known to humankind.
Actually, the CDI 370 does it in another nutty way, but we don’t need to go there.
What, just what, may I ask, did they think they were doing? The original power supply, which is extremely rare these days, uses an RJ45 connector – yes, one of those things on the end of your router cable.
But the fun doesn’t stop there, oh no, somehow, the power supply generates +5v and -5v! Utter madness, and as you might expect, this stopped me in my tracks for a couple of weeks.
So what now?
Well, thanks to a friendly nudge from the people at Retrostuff, I found there were 3 alternatives:
- Arcade Power Supply
- ATX Power Supply
- Build your own
I nearly went for the Arcade one, didn’t fancy the build your own one, and decided to opt for the ATX Power Supply. Why? Because it was cheap and easy – well mostly…
Wiring things up the wrong way and starting small fires so that you don’t have to!
So these are the pinouts (courtesy of Retrostuff) :
1 – +5 V (3,3 A)
2 – (+5 V optional)
3 – +5 V
4 – GND
5 – +5 V
6 – GND
7 – -5 V (pin 18)
8 – PS_ON (pin 14)
It’s best to make sure you use separate wires for all +5 V and GND connections.
And here is the diagram I used for the RJ45 connections (top down view):
I very carefully wired up my RJ45 to the large connector on the ATX power supply:
WRONG!!!
The little Philips CDi 450 didn’t like that! The wires and RJ45 connector got very very very hot.
I switched it off and checked all the wiring. It was exactly right! No idea. So I plugged it back in and tried again.
Well I’d never started a fire by plugging things in before! I had some lovely flames coming off the wires going to the RJ45 plug. Something, and the smell of burning plastic hinted at this, wasn’t quite right…
Check Again!
I took a closer look at the RJ45 plug, and then the penny dropped. The connections on the Philips 450 CDi are the other way around! So pin 1 is at the top right like this:
wiring diagram
Spaghetti junction, but functional. Spaghetti Function? Pretend I didn’t type that.
Moving on. I turned the power on, nothing got hot and nothing caught fire, so I pressed the power button on the Philips CDi 450…
It lives!!! The wonky picture was me and not the console by the way.
I will tidy up the wiring and make it much safer at some point. Promise.
Is that it then?
Yes. Well, no, not really. Because the next problem was that the Philips CDi 450 wouldn’t read any discs. But that’s a story for another day.
Long story short, I replaced the optical pickup, and voila!
