Basically my situation is this. My router is dying, a friend of mine has a spare netgear router which is perfect for me. The only problem is he has no power adapter for it, I have an adapter which fits, and the voltage (12) is perfect, but the amps are too high. The router wants 1.0a, but the power adapter gives out 1.5a. Now I know that if this was a laptop power supply then that would be fine, as it will only draw the amps it needs, but I do not know if a router has sort of regulation. I imagine it has some otherwise it would run at full power at all times and never be in an "idle" state, but I am not sure. So in short, is it safe to use a 1.5amp adapter on a router that wants a 1.0amp adapter for a few days/weeks until I get a replacement?
Yes It will draw as much as needed. The 1.5A is the max the adaptor can supply, not how much it will 'force' on the electrical device.
Right cool, cheers guys. I thought as much and if it was mine I probably would have just ran the risk, but it isn't mine yet so I wanted to play it safe.
Just to let you know that the 1.5a power adapter didn't work, it turned on but didn't stay on. I tried another one from my brothers external hdd, which was 2a, and that is currently working flawlessly, the 1.5a power adapter must have had something weird going on with it. But because that is the way these things always go, my friend found the power adapter and is bringing it to me tomorrow.
It might be that the polarity of the 1.5A is the wrong way - i.e. the outside of the plug is +ve, and the inside is -ve on the adapter, and the opposite way round for the router. A higher-rated power adapter is fine for most applications, the only time you might find trouble is when you plug an adapter with a higher voltage rating than required into a device. It might sound a bit daft, but did you check that the various adapters provided AC or DC? My netgear routers all use 18V AC, and a lot of home electronics use DC. If you tried the wrong one, it wouldn't work.
Yeah I thought about ac/dc (hehe), I am pretty sure it was an AC adapter, it was from my GFs old wired router. The adapter may have been faulty thinking about it, which means the her old wired router could actually be working fine
It said AC, but most routers need DC. So you are lucky that the router didn't die. And yes, more A's is not a problem, it is the voltage and the kind of voltage that kills most electrical stuff.
