tux.ly / blog

I posted yesterday, that my DELL notebook is going to be repaired. Fortunately, I have a second notebook (my old one) for these days, so I can keep working on our semester project. The bad thing is, that there are some reasons why I bought a new notebook (back in March 2009). One of these reasons was a failure in the power supply. The notebook didn’t get power all the time, even though it was connected. I always assumed that it was a problem on the notebook. But the problem was the power connector.

And as I need my notebook again, I am again confronted with the problem. This time I wanted to do something against it… And after some measurements I found out that the source of failure is the power supply itself. It gave out very variable voltages. I suppose, there are some melted capacitors inside

 Anyway, the plan was to open the cable and connect it to a voltage generator (see picture on the left). I was assuming, that inside the cable were two separated ones, which would allow me to connect it without any problems. But as I operated on it, I found out that IT WASN’T that way. This is the deal: Under the plastic cover, there is a plaited plus-connection, then another isolator and then the minus-connection (see picture on the right).

As quickly as that plan was dead, I came up with a new one: Opening the connector itself (in the hope I could grip a connection there). No chance… still the same shit. And then, René had a brilliant idea… Why not just connecting somehow the old connector to my current DELL power supply. As crazy as the idea sounded, as brilliant it was… Both power supplies have the same voltage (19V direct current). The only difference was the maximum power output, but the difference was not big enough to keep us from doing that (see picture on the right).

After putting it on power and measuring the output… (OF COURSE IT WORKED!!!), I tried it by connecting it on the notebook and OF COURSE HERE IT ALSO WORKED!!!

This is the darkest electronic hack I have ever made, and PLEASE children: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!!!!!!

I hope this will last until my notebook is back from repair. But I am pretty confident, because the constructions looks pretty stable!

Note: This is a shortened version of how and what exactly happened. The first prototype, I made it with normal tape.