Rectifiers drop voltage? I thought with a DC current it would effectively be a short circuit.
If all you are doing is dropping 1v, just shove a single resistor in series. 1v is an incredibly small amount to drop at low current like 0.5A
what... 1/0.5 = 2Ohms... you need a 2 Ohm resistor... its hardly worth even bothering with a voltage divider.
Zener Diodes... again... how would you go about causing a volt drop like that? Last time I used them was in a feedback circuit to set off a "clipping" LED on a power amp, as current flows as it approached breakdown voltage (i.e. filtering out low voltages/signals in order to only allow high through) I dont see how youd do it with either a rectifier or a zener diode, and certainly not a plain ol diode. Be interesting if you could post it up like as I could always be mistaken.
What im worried about is not blowing up the adapter, but instead you burning out your usb ports