I took my last 12v adapter back to radio shack, and they found that it was not working. They took it back even though the wires were already spliced. I had them check the next one I took before I took it, and it worked. However, when I got home, I spliced the wires and connected the wires to the red and black of the fan, but I still have no power to the fan. I have tried all combinations of connections of the wires (excluding the yellow wire). The 12v adapter I have is a 500ma adapter from radio shack. I have the PCAC fan, and I know it works as I have tested it. The PCAC says it requires .07-.13amps. I am not sure if the adapter is too much, but I have not seen one that is lower than 300ma. I am growing frustrated with this, as it is the last step before finishing up the pj. Please help if you know anything about it!!!

Obviously the 500ma is not too much as that is what is being sold in the LL store. I am not sure why it isn't working. Again, i have the adapter plugged into an outlet, the cord spliced, and the wires connected to the fan wires. Not sure why it will not work.

It should be fine, the mA rating should be higher then the fans, I know mine is a 800 mA and I have the straight black line to the red and the one with the white stripe to my black if I remember right. Just to let you know mine do not work if wired the other way ie white stripe to red and plain black to black.

I just (as in like 30 seconds ago), posted a mini-tutorial about how to wire fans using a 12 volt adapter. Take a look at it here (4th post down):
http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6170&hl=

Oh, by the way, the yellow wire isn't needed at all for something like this.

Good luck.

current is drawn by the load .... so when something is rated at 500ma, then it means that whatever LOAD you hook it up to shouldnt draw more than 500mA of current. I made this mistake once with a cable modem, I lost my power adaptor to it and went to radio shack and purchased a 500mA adaptor. I didnt check the specs on the modem cause if figured a small device like that would be fine under 500mA ... I was wrong, it had a peak draw of 1A .... It worked most of the time, but when I did some heavy traffic downloading (gaming), it will power down and lose sync ....

Moral of the story is that the adaptor you have is fine ..... You have to be doing something wrong with the splicing of the wires .... I would first make sure that your second adaptor is still good. If youve done something wrong it may be bad like the first one was ...

How can I check to see that it is still good? Can I use a wiggy on it, or is that simply for an ac current? It never showed power with a wiggy at my house, but did at radio shack.

Poops,
I have the same adapter as you, and did everything exactly like that, only I did not use wire nuts yet. That should not matter though. I planned to put them on once I knew it was working. Maybe I will try it with them now.

I don't know how I could have ruined the adapter, as all I did was strip the wires and connect them like I have done to all my other wires using a normal wire stripper. Who knows though!

I don't know what a "wiggy" is, but the ideal way to check it is with a multimeter. You can pick up cheap ones as low as $10. It's well worth the investment to have one around the house anyhow.

I had trouble with my PCAC fan when I first wired them up in the box. They were a little too tight in the holes and this bent them just slightly but it was enough to prevent the fans from spinning.

I spend a great deal of time doing various sorts of electronic testing and I have never heard of a wiggy .... Could someone please tell me what in the world a wiggy is ...

You should invest in a multimeter .... set it to DC volts, 20Volt scale .... and measure the voltage out of the adaptor.

this will tell you voltage and tell you polarity .... if you hook it up and read -12V then that means you got the postive and negative reversed, if you switch them around you would then read postive 12V DC

dont buy a cheapy meter and radio shack cause youll prolly pay $20 for it there, when you can get the same meter at wal-mart for prolly $10 ...