So although this isnt car related, i figured it might help someone else out there.
The Problem: Mac's terrible power adapter designs
What Happens: the cord frays inside because of the stress from wrapping it up around the adapters "ears"
The Solution: Tear it apart and replace the broken section!
My g/f's G4 powerbook has always had adapter issues. When her original Mac adapter when out the Mac store told us to buy the aftermarket adapter because the mac units were overpriced and not built or designed well (this is the mac store employee telling me this). So i did and the replacement was fine, but had no exterior led indicator to tell if the laptop was charging, and overtime the connection became finiky and a year later it just stopped working. So i decided rather than shell out the dough for a new mac cord i would try to fix the original one (what did i have to loose right?) So here is a DIY of how you can try to fix this too, now this is at your own risk, and obviously unplug the cord while doing all of this work
So Here Is the issue of the frayed cord (this one is really bad since you can actually see the inner cord), but even before that you would have to wiggle that part of the cord to find the "sweet spot" to get it to connect
So Here are the tools i used (some i didnt end up using) Not shown: heatshrink, razor blade (for cutting and stripping wires), and voltmeter
Additional items are Tape (electrical, duct, vinyl) and fuel hose
Using the chisel and the hammer i worked my way around the case and finally cracked it all, and then i was able to separate the two halves. There is some heat sink type glue that make try to keep the two together but don't worry about it just slide something in there and pry it from the lid
Then i went ahead and clipped off a section of the bad cord about 2 inches from the infected area. From there i peeled back the cord cover to expose the positive wire in the middle, and the ground wire that surrounds the outside of that. I did this so that i could find out which terminal on the adapters circuit board went to power and which went to the ground. I did this by using a voltmeter and setting it to ohms and finding which ones made a connection to each other.
Once i figured out which ones went to which i cut out the bad section completely then removed the heatshrink that combined the two leads from the adapters circuit board and turned them into the beginning of the power cord. By doing this i now had two pieces of wire that were directly soldered to the circuit board and were now very easy for me to attach additional wire to. One is white and one is gray. Here is a picture of the two wires i am talking about with the heatshrink and some of the cord still attached:
So to make my life easier i now attached two wires to each of these new leads and secured the connection with heatshrink tubing. This allowed me to bring the wires out of the cramped casing and give me some room to attach the rest of the original cord to my new leads
Here is a picture of the new leads now finally attached to the original cord. As you can see in this picture it looks like the ground (the wire on the outside of the original power cord) was the grey wire on the cuircut board terminal, and the power (the wire in the very middle of the original power cord) was the white one, but you should check that for yourself to make sure.
So next i plugged it into the laptop and crossed my fingers.... TADA! IT WORKED!
So now i could wrap it all up, i used gorilla tape to close the case back up, and electrical tape to keep the new leads together, it wasnt pretty but it worked great!
Then i decided to make the casing a little more stylish. I used some white vinyl i had lying around from other projects, and cut it into inch wide strips. I removed the old black tape and then clamped the case and wrapped it in the new white strips, now it didnt stand out so much! Then i got a wild idea. To keep the new leads from rubbing up against the exit hole in the power adapter i took a piece of fuel line rubber hose, cut it down the side, and slid the leads inside it, then i wedged it into the hole nice and tight, then wrapped it up with electrical tape. Now the leads cannot make a tight bend out of the adapter, or rub on the edge, so this should prevent this from happening again. Plus it helps keep the leads from getting pulled out from the adapter! Anyway, its still working great, and the g/f is off my back about it! Thought i would share.
