Laptop Surgery
Posted by stephen on Saturday, 04th February, 2006 @ 19:02
On Sunday I picked up my tiny Sony VAIO that I'd lent to Aaron after he moved over here in September. Sadly it had been plugged in during a rather severe storm and was unable to power up. With much hope of a burnt out fuse I tried a different mains lead. Unfortunately this was not the culprit.
A quick poke with the multimeter and it seemed to be the power supply that's the problem, so hopefully the laptop itself would be OK. A little Googling found me a new PSU, for ?51. Of course this little VAIO features an entirely non-standard connector into the laptop doubtless made from unobtainium.
Fortunately it has only two pins, and a + and - sign on the connector to indicate which is which. A couple of minutes on ebay looking for '16v 2.5A' found me a single result, a Fujitsu laptop PSU for ?9.99.
So I thought it worth the risk. Certainly a less depressing waste of money if it turned out the laptop itself was fatally wounded too.
Come Wednesday evening and I have a jiffy bag waiting behind my dustbin where the postman usually leaves things rather than carding me. I also came home to my photos ordered through iPhoto leaning against the door. A convenience for both the postman and myself, but one that carries with it a few risks I feel.
Luckily, even though I wasn't home from work till after 9pm, both items were still dutifully present and dry. The photos had come out beautifully, even at the larger sizes. I can thoroughly recommend the built-in printing to any Mac user who's fond of their digital photography.
A little later, and after a successful hunt for my wire strippers, the surgery began. The Fujitsu was certainly more stout and less comely than the original Sony unit. This had the benefit however of the DC lead being made of a nice, thick and well separated copper pair in thick black plastic.
This approach was far too brutish and uncouth for the VAIO DC cable of course. An altogether more svelte purple cable that upon incision revealed a fine centre core within a thin plastic sheaf, surrounded by an encircling copper layer. A further multimeter examination revealed that as suspected the inner core was the positive terminal.
With bare wire now showing from the more industrial DC cable of the Fujitsu supply, another probing proved positive was the cable with the thin white line.
A little stripping and squeezing and mangling resulted in a rather tenuous connection and so, for want of a soldering iron, I searched for some black electrical tape. But it had unfortunately been swallowed up somewhere in my many piles of things and could not be found. So sellotape sufficed and the connection was now a little less meagre.
Not one to get ahead of myself (a trait not borne out of natural discipline but bitter experience) the AC cable was connected and the DC connector pins were probed once more. That ?6 expenditure in Maplins was definitely paying off. And sure enough, 16v or thereabouts was eagerly awaiting a task and travelling in the appropriate direction.
All that remained was to plug it into the VAIO. And so with much trepidation I inserted my purple end into a slightly darker purple hole. And nothing, no fireworks, no surging orgasms of light from the charging LED. How disappointing.
With my need for instant gratification left wanton, fate chose to let me down easy. A few seconds later, after current had surged through the many circuits and built up sufficiently in all the right places, an understated blink of the charging LED seemed to wink at me as if to say 'only joking'.
