Power Adaptors question

[peterpjr40]

Hopefully this is a simple question!

I have a portable cassette player and a portable CD player, but only have the mains adaptor for the CD player.

The blurb on the cassette player says it runs at 3 volts and the CD player at 4.5 volts. Both take two AA batteries.

The adaptor says 4.5 volts.and its connector fits both machines.

Can I run either machine using the same adaptor or am I asking for trouble?

Thanks

Peter

 

[Resqueline]

There are several reasons why it could work, and several reasons why it might cause damage.
With mains adaptors there's more to them than just the voltage. It's their polarity, their current rating, and if they're regulated or not. And some are even AC output.
An unloaded & unregulated 3V adapter can easily exeed 5V. How much overvoltage it delivers when loaded depends on how over-rated it is relative to the actual device draw.
The tape player is a low-power device which no doubt has a lot of headroom for power fluctuations in its design, without risk of overheating etc.
The 4.5V adapter for the CD player may very well happen to be a regulated one. If so, it's my guesstimate that the tape player will tolerate this 50% overvoltage.
If it's unregulated I'd guess it'd be too much. It's usually not easy to tell if it's regulated or not without actually measuring the no-load voltage.

 

[peterpjr40]

Thanks for the speedy response. I have checked the polarity and they are both the same. The adaptor is DC output and both machines are printed DC at their sockets. I don't know whether the adaptor is regulated, that's beyond my limited capabilities!

I am a little confused that they both use the same batteries which gives 3 volts and don't understand why the adaptor would be 4.5 volts.

I will give it a try somewhere safe and see what happens. In the meantime I will have a thorough search for the other adaptor, it must be somewhere in the house.

Once again thanks for the info.

Peter