I have been working on setting up my ham shack, and one problem was dealing with the big deep cycle 12v battery that I have been using to power my radio. Mainly how to keep a charge on it.

I have since decided to ditch the battery as a main power source altogether after I got the idea that I should just use an old computer power supply that I have laying around here. It is a switching, regulated supply capable of delivering at least 12 amps at 12v which is perfect for my current radio setup.

Since it is an ATX supply, I had to join the green wire to its neighboring black wire on the motherboard interface to have it remain on full time. My supply also has an on-off switch on the back which I will use instead of the soft-on as there is some power drain otherwise.

I pulled the yellow (+12v) wire and black wire(gnd) out of the pentium 4 supplementary power connector and attached a 12v->12v computerized battery charger which will keep the backup battery topped up in the best way possible.

I can now simply attach my radio to a free black/yellow on the power supply directly. They detach easily from the hard drive connectors also by pulling them out of the plastic.

I am planning to add a dpdt switch or possibly a relay to permit easy switching of my radios to backup power later on.

Here is a nice overview of using an atx supply for your non computer power needs.

And a nice picture of my current setup: