Pooh Bear ) writes:
The Slash wrote:

Yeah, the barrel is bent. I tried to bend it back a little, and if i
wobble it around i can get the charging light to come on, but it never
stays on for more than a few seconds. I can't solder, and I have no
test equipment. I found an adapter on eBay for 40 cents, but I just
wanna make sure it'll work before I buy anything. Is there a way to
tell? Is the charging light coming on occasionally an indication of a
problem internally, or is it an indication that everything is find on
the outside and that the problem is the bent barrel? Because if it's
the former, a new adapter would obviously have no effect.

Laptop power connectors are utterly shockingly poor !

Graham


When I got a Powerbook 1400C a few years ago at a community
group sale, forty dollars (I actually assumed it was an older
Mac laptop, but ran up the bidding for the fun and for the group),
it didn't come with an adaptor. It wasn't a barrel connector,
and so I assumed it was some really oddball one. Turned out to
be a 1/8" stereo phone plug (the Apple adaptors have some
extra shield around it, but it runs fine without that), and
to make it worse, what's usually used for ground on a phone
plugs was the +24v. I was really surprised, it just doesn't
seem like there's enough contact to work properly, and that
the whole thing wouldn't suffer from flakey contact.

On the other hand, that makes it real easy to replace.

Indeed, after I figured out the details of the plug, I pulled
a 24v switching supply out of a scrap inkjet printer, and
away I went.

Michael