CD-i member Keenan Cross is building a USB based power supply for the CD-i 450 player. 2020 was a nice year for homebrew on CD-i, and Keenan is learning a lot about how the electronics inside work. He shares an update with Interactive Dreams: "I've finally come back to the replacement PSU project after taking time away from it (and also complicated life events, etc), and it's inching forward. I've gotten a simple adapter to power up and spin a disc a couple times, I've ordered printed circuit boards with that design, which I would think should be much more reliable than something I solder together with my clumsy hands. In case the simple adapter ends up never working, though, I'm also working on completely recreating the original PSU based on the schematic in the service manual, as close to 1:1 as I can. The roadblock I'm hitting, though, is that the service manual doesn't specify what two components are beyond a generic part name. Would anybody who has the brick be willing to open it up and take some pictures? (EDIT: oops, apparently don't do that! But the 470 works as well and is safer to open) Part 5101 is listed as "Fil. Choke Assy," and 5102 just as "transformer," which isn't enough information for me to work with. With luck, I'll be able to get one version or other working that I can provide to folks who aren't able to get the original. I've found close replacements for most of the obsolete parts and tracked down a couple others on eBay. I'm fairly resigned to none of it being exact enough, but it's something to try. It looks like I'll probably need to find things to harvest the transformers from, but that's no big problem. (no small problem either, of course) This plan is a contingency anyway, and I'm learning a whole lot as I go that'll help me in personal projects"
CD-i member Retrostuff: "Don't expect these parts to be off-the-shelf parts. Before people crack their power supplies open - don't do that! Look into a CDI 470/490 instead; they have a very, very similar power supply circuit and only differ in the way they are switched on and off." - Visit the community to see more pictures and discussion!
[Thanks, Keenan Cross, Retrostuff]