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No updates for a while ; fixed power brick

07 05 07 - 21:36 Hmm, no updates for a while. Time to do one.

Disclaimer: Be careful if you try to do this yourself. I am not responsible if you end up touching 240v wires, or you solder wrong and blow your expensive machine up etc etc or anything else bad happens, either directly or indirectly caused by you reading or not reading this.

Oh, and sorry for the fact that this post is probably quite unreadable. I don't have much time...

Anyway, my power brick broke. More specifically, it broke where the cable goes into the power brick.



Course of action... hmmm... what if we cut the lead, say, 5cm after the break, and solder it back into the inside of the power brick?

But, I hear you saying, you can't get to the inside of the power brick, because like most power bricks, it's moulded shut. Well, not unless you have one of these:



:D

Anyway, cut all the way round the edges:



and lever it apart (it's all glued together, it's VERY strongly built. I hear someone ran one over with a car, and it survived with no damage...)




Cut the wire, strip the centre conductor (it's coax), and solder the cable and ground down to the PCB, after desoldering the previous wires (which were broken.) (Didn't get pictures. My hands were full enough soldering).

Put it down on the table, connect the AC power cord, plug it in and switch it on. (Don't touch it if it hasn't got the plastic case on...). Basically, check to see that it doesn't explode :). (It shouldn't, but if you soldered wrong, or cut through something you shouldn't when you were cutting it open...).

Then double-check with a multimeter. It should have the negative end at the shield of the coax, and the positive end at the centre. Ensure it does, and that the voltage is more or less 24 volts.

Now you have two choices. Glue the case back together, or duct-tape it. You can guess which one I'd pick.



Yep.

Finally, take a deep breath, and plug it into your laptop. And hope it doesn't kill anything. It seems to have worked fine for me...