This weekend I found myself in search of a power cord for an original Playstation. It's the same plug that the Sega Dreamcast and Saturn and Sony PS2 use, and probably the Xbox as well, but it seems like online almost everyone wants $10 for a suitable replacement.

I found a cheaper option.

I found out by accident that the local Game Stop sells them for $4.99. I had to run an errand about four doors away from a Game Stop anyway, so I dropped in. It took me a little while to find, but I found the cable.

It's not the same. What they sell as a "universal" AC power cable has two round sides on the plug, not a round and a square like the original Sony cable. I knew I'd seen the connector on the end of that Gamestop cable before, so I didn't pay $5 for it.

I did some digging, and I found that the official name for the connectior the Playstation uses is IEC 60320 C7P. The "P" stands for "polarized." The "universal" connector on the cable Gamestop was selling is the IEC 60320 C7. The nonpolarized plug fits the polarized connector, but not the other way around.

Once I knew what I was looking for, I found a picture on Wikipedia. The picture captioned as "C7 line socket" is what you're looking for.

A ton of home appliances use the IEC 60320 C7. Every tape recorder or boombox I ever owned, for instance. It's the most common connector used for devices that draw 2.5 amps of current or less. Well, my boomboxes are long gone, so I raided my wife's. Hers just happens to be different. Rats. I ended up swiping the cable from a dead laptop AC adapter. Wouldn't you know it, it plugs right in to the Playstation's power port. That old laptop cable was probably made in the same factory as the cables Gamestop sells as universal video game power cables.

I'm happy. I saved five bucks. (The wasted trip to Gamestop doesn't count because I walked there from someplace I had to go anyway.)

It wasn't long ago that you could find this type of AC cable anywhere for a two or three dollars, tops. By anywhere, I really do mean anywhere--discount stores, Radio Shack, consumer electronics stores, maybe even dollar stores if you're lucky.

Cables are high markup items, but even at $3, these things offer a healthy profit margin, so they should still be readily available at something near that price. I know sometime in the last decade I've bought one of these things at Kmart.

So before you pay even $5 for a replacement cable, raid the drawer where you keep all your stray electronics wires and see if you can find one that fits. Failing that, look around for something else around the house, like a boombox, VCR, or DVD player, that has a power cord that will fit. If not, hit the electronics section of your local discount store. Odds are it's closer than the closest game store, and a suitable cable should cost less there too.

Don't go into a store asking for an IEC 60320 C7 because they won't know what you're talking about, of course. The name may be listed on the packaging. The United States doesn't require that name to be molded onto the cable, although some countries do. Study the Wikipedia image and you should recognize the cable on sight in a store. If worse comes to worse, print out the larger picture from the Wikipedia article and bring it with you to compare.

So why does Sony use the polarized connector? Probably to fool people into buying a replacement cable from them at an inflated price to replace a lost cable. They fooled me, and I should know better.