Perhaps everyone knew about this except me. My RIB quit working, so I searched the internet and I found a somewhat obscure design - NO External power is required for this RIB. I was skeptical, but I had some most of the parts just lying around, so I built it - Bingo!! This thing works! Less that $5 for me. Probably about $10 if you have to buy all the parts. Works off your laptop serial port.
http://members.shaw.ca/swstuff/maxtrac.html
Make sure you click on the .jpg link on the aforementioned webpage to get the schematic.
Works on Maxtrac, Maratrac, and Radius. Haven't tried others.
