Freeze the adapter

The charging adapter for my Transformer Prime decided to stop working last night. Plugged in the tablet, but no charging was happening. Uh oh.

Put the volt meter on it and saw that it was providing 5V USB power. There are 5 other contacts that I’m guessing provide the actual charging voltage for the batteries, which I think are rated at something like 7.2V and thus won’t charge using regular USB power. I wasn’t able to easily access them with the probes on my volt meter, and it was late at night so I didn’t feel like futzing around with it too much. The cable seemed fine, since the tablet recognized that I had plugged it into a computer USB port. That meant either the charger was bad or the port on the tablet was bad. 

It was off to Amazon.com to see how much a replacement would be. In the one of the reviews for the ASUS charger, the reviewer suggested putting it in the freezer could help fix a charger gone bad. I thought it probably wouldn’t hurt to try, so I stuck it in a Ziploc freezer bag and left it in the freezer overnight.

Took it out of the freezer the next day and left it on the desk for a few hours to let it come back up to room temperature. When I plugged it into the power squid and connected the tablet, it started charging again! Freezing the charger actually worked, much to my surprise. Not sure what exactly the freezing did, but whatever it was seems to have worked. Hopefully it stays that way.