Original SNES PSU causing eye strain and headache — possible power issue?
Recently I picked up a 1CHIP SNES and was genuinely excited — it felt like a lucky find. It came with a non-original power supply, so at first I just used a cheap Chinese universal adapter. Later I got a flash cartridge, and that’s when things got weird: I started seeing image distortions and white lines. I assumed it was a power issue, so I went down the rabbit hole of trying to get an original PSU. I even bought a cheap yellow 2CHIP SNES just to get its original power supply, plus a voltage transformer. And here’s where it gets strange: after about 20–30 minutes of playing on the original PSU setup, I started getting intense eye pain, like pressure on the eyeballs shooting back into the head. This never happened when using the Chinese adapter. Even now, about 30+ minutes after stopping, I still feel a heavy sensation in my head and a strange strain in my vision and focus. A couple of other observations: the 2CHIP system looks slightly softer in image quality, and there is a faint constant high-pitched noise coming from it. The 1CHIP doesn’t have that noise, but is the one that triggered the symptoms. Now I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. Can an original SNES PSU actually output unstable or noisy power under load? Could the voltage transformer introduce ripple or interference that doesn’t show visually but still affects performance? Or is this unrelated to power entirely and something like display flicker, CRT behavior, or sync issues? The image itself looks fine at first glance with no obvious artifacts, but it feels like there’s some kind of hidden instability going on. What’s the correct way to diagnose this, and is it more likely a bad PSU or transformer setup, or something else entirely?