Revived Car Stereo

For a few years I enjoyed a great sound system in my room, however it was recently taken from under my nose and I was left without a stereo.

// Picture of old stereo

The good news was that I had just gotten the stereo in my car upgraded and I had the old stereo on hand (2005 Toyota Corolla).

// New stereo

I also had an old 250W PC power supply laying around.

// PC power supply

The PC power supply has many outputs, the main one of interest is the 12 V line as that is what the stereo operates on. The only problem is that the stereo uses a custom auto wiring harness for power and speakers. The solution was to order a reverse wiring harness for the stereo and connect everything up as per the wiring description that comes with the harness.

// Wiring harness diagram

After this was completed I plugged the power supply in and nothing happened. There is an extra pin on the power supply that when shorted to ground, turns the power supply on. The hack solution was to insert a staple into the connector and make the short using a friction fit.

// Staple short

After doing this, everything booted up and worked great. The final step was that I built an enclosure to hold the deck and four speakers out of whatever was lying around at the time.

// Final product