Reducing the number of power bricks?

[Erik_Twice]

One of the most painful parts of making a new setup are the power bricks. They are ugly, unsightly and take a lot of space. Having one or two around is fine, but having one per console is too much.

I was wondering if it was possible to reduce their number somehow, perhaps by powering several consoles with just one. What are your thoughts?

[MrPopo]

Most consoles take slightly different combinations of voltage and amperage, and feeding in a bad signal will degrade the components. I've managed to fuck up my CDX because I was using a Model 2 Genesis brick on it instead of a CDX brick. They have the same plug, but the Model 2 provides less amperage, which has damaged the console.

[pierrot]

Theoretically, if you had a bunch of consoles, with bricks that collectively averaged a DC operating voltage within something like +/- 10% of their individual voltages, then you could add their current requirements together and potentially run them off of one power supply. In general, the DC voltage being off from the power supply spec will probably only affect biassing on the operational/BJT amp circuits (for analog audio and video output), but if they happened to be operating rail to rail, too, then anything under the specified voltage could clip and cut off certain signals. I believe most of those outputs are within 1 volt peak-to-peak, though, so that's not an issue.

The real concern, unless you had some smart device controlling the power, is that you probably would be looking at a fire hazard. Also, for something like the NES, not all of the AC to DC power conversion system is internal to the power supply brick, and there are probably other examples of non-uniformity. I would probably never want to do something like this, personally. I have a Trio M1 for the Genesis + Sega CD, and I've only used it once or twice because it runs ungodly hot. I feel like if I actually tested it for efficiency, I would just end up throwing it in the garbage.

My personal setup would probably not be something other people like very much, but I'm sort of a nutjob who unplugs everything when it's not in use, and plugs it in again when it is being used. It tends to work for me.

[samsonlonghair]

There is such a thing as a switching power supply with interchangeable tips. You couldn't plug it into everything all at once, but you could plug it into just the console you're using at the moment. After all, you're not going to be playing your Sega Genesis and your super Nintendo simultaneously, are you?

[Ziggy]

Get something like this and mount it to the back of your furniture.

https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Outle ... ower+strip

https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Outle ... ower+strip

Then just use a bit of cable management to route each wire to the console so you don't end up like this...