Vacuum Fluorescent Display
So I got this big honkin' vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) for my senior design project from one of my professors. This is a good news bad news situation. Good news: I just saved about $300-$400+. Bad news: the thing is enormous and consumes a metric fuckton of current (relative to the rest of the electronics in the project).
So I dont really care about the size at this point. That's a problem that can always be dealt with later when I really start working on the display portion of my project. Besides, it's a 256x64 pixel display, which is a nice big grid to work with.
A data card riveted to the back of the display
The thing is, this thing takes a whopping 4 amps of current (20 watts/5 volts = 4 amps). So I have a wimpy little 1 Amp 5V/+12V/-12V power supply that I built as a project in another class. Obviously that just isn't going to cut it.
So the obvious solution is to build my own high current power supply. With a bit of research, it turns out that the easiest way to build a high current power supply is to utilize an ATX computer power supply. So here we go... | 
