Who's Familiar With Power Supplies?

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Nightfall
Nightfall Posts: 10,067
edited April 2018 in Electronics
What are the differences between a switching power supply and a power supply with a transformer inside of it? This is regarding old video game consoles. The original power supplies have transformers inside of them and are very heavy, any new replacement is a switching power supply. Assuming the voltage and amperage are within acceptable specs on both accounts what are going to be the practical differences? Is there any chance the switching power supply would ever do damage to the console or it's internal voltage regulator being as it was designed for the power supply with a heavy transformer inside of it or does it make no difference to the console? From what I read this particular console has an internal regulator that drops the voltage fed to it down to 5V and can accept up to 40V, although that is not recommended because of the heat it would create.

Original plug: 10V 0.85A

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New switching supply: 9V 1.0A

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afterburnt wrote: »
They didn't speak a word of English, they were from South Carolina.

Village Idiot of Club Polk
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  • verb
    verb Posts: 10,176
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    Good question as always! Found this:
    whdv4bfzmwyg.png
    http://micro.rohm.com/en/techweb/knowledge/acdc/s-acdc/01-s-acdc/13
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  • pitdogg2
    pitdogg2 Posts: 24,559
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    As long as the power it is putting out what is required I'd think nothing. Switching use electricity more efficiently
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  • delkal
    delkal Posts: 764
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    The only problem I found is that Switching Buck converters need a certain amp load before they "turn on". Get a 5 amp converter and try and draw a few hundred miliamps and you get zero volts. For powering real world devices this is usually not an issue.
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  • mhardy6647
    mhardy6647 Posts: 33,029
    edited April 2018
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    switching power supplies generate pulsed (DC) waveforms at a (fairly) high frequency. It is easier to filter (smooth) high-frequency ripple compared to the low frequency (50 or 60 Hz) AC that is supplied in most countries (60 Hz in the US, of course). The iron and the capacitors can be much smaller in a switch-mode supply.

    The problem with 'em is the noise they generate. :p
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  • Nightfall
    Nightfall Posts: 10,067
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    mhardy6647 wrote: »
    The problem with 'em is the noise they generate. :p

    Does that noise have any chance of breaking or damaging ~30 year old hardware, voltage regulators, etc or would it only manifest itself as superficial things such as video and audio artifacts?
    afterburnt wrote: »
    They didn't speak a word of English, they were from South Carolina.

    Village Idiot of Club Polk
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  • mhardy6647
    mhardy6647 Posts: 33,029
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    Nightfall wrote: »
    mhardy6647 wrote: »
    The problem with 'em is the noise they generate. :p

    Does that noise have any chance of breaking or damaging ~30 year old hardware, voltage regulators, etc or would it only manifest itself as superficial things such as video and audio artifacts?

    The feed DC should be quite clean -- the noise is (should be) all in the form of RFI/EMI "Hash" -- not dangerous to the hardware per se, just -- well -- environmental noise to get induced into cables and high gain circuitry and whatnot. That's why you guys need all them fancy-pants cables and whatnot ;)
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