On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 5:24:14 PM UTC+1, Johny B Good wrote:
On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 09:41:15 +0100, fred wrote:



In article ,

writes



I've given up with my TP-Link WR1043D after about 18 months - it falls over if it

gets slightly too warm and has a number of irritating minor bugs, for example

some, but not all, internet radio station start buffering after half an hour or so. I

assumed it was issues with the streams, but having switched back to my

bombproof old Netgear DG834G, that streams all stations fine and doesn't fall over

if the ambient temperature reaches 25C or whatever. The TP-Link was very cheap

for the functionality but looks like for once I got what I paid for.



Check out the voltage of the plug top power supply under load, I've had

a couple fail early. They show fine off load, it was the old bad caps

story



That's actually an excellent observation. That could well be the root

of Simon's problems with the TP-Link.



However, since the use of switching regulators in these cheap

commodity routers and switches has displaced those ancient analogue

voltage regulators for well over a decade now (purely on cost cutting

grounds), it's a simple enough problem to fix since the only matching

requirement of a substitute wallwart is plug size and VA rating over a

voltage ranging from a low of 6 to a max of 15 volts DC.



The switching regulator will (unlike the specials used in laptop

power management switching regulators) cheerfully accept a wide range

of input voltages equal to or greater than the output voltage

threshold (typically 5 volt) that's within the upper input voltage

limit, usually defined by the input capacitor voltage rating

(conservatively, a maximum of 15 volts).



You can safely power 99% of all such kit from any 10VA rated

nominally 12 volt wallwart that happens to have a suitably matched

plug on the end of its DC output lead (if necessary, you could always

use the plug off the old wallwart to fix this issue if needs must).



--

J B Good

Maybe I shouldn't throw it away then, however I suspect it would go into that box of things that I really should throw away, to be fixed one day. If I manage to keep stuff long enough I could fix them in my retirement, but I'm sure the stuff would be obsolete by then.
Simon.