{"id":88,"date":"2010-02-13T16:18:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T16:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/2010\/02\/13\/mr-fixit\/"},"modified":"2010-02-13T16:18:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-13T16:18:00","slug":"mr-fixit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/2010\/02\/mr-fixit\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr Fixit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am typing this from a 2009 model <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macbookpro\/\">MacBook Pro<\/a>, while my wife uses my previous laptop, a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PowerBook_G4\">PowerBook G4<\/a> circa 2002.  I loved my PowerBook, but there was a fatal design flaw in the power supply.  The cord that came out of it was prone to weakening and breaking off.  It failed in 2008, when I did a repair like <a href=\"http:\/\/theappleblog.com\/2005\/08\/13\/powerbook-65w-ac-adaper-repair\/\">this one<\/a>, cutting off the bad bits of wire and soldering the good bits back together.  This held out fine for a while, until it broke at a similar place (not where I fixed it before) due to the poorly positioned wire endpoint.  I tried to fix it again, but something went wrong and the power supply blew.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Of course, by this time Apple has moved on.  The power supply is still available, but it&#8217;s pretty damn expensive (more than R800) and would only be here in two weeks if I ordered it today.  So we went out and bought a cheap (R400) universal power adapter and spent some time researching the voltage and polarity of the G4 PowerBook power supply.  For those of you wondering, it&#8217;s 24V DC with a connector just like a 3.5 mm headphone jack.  The tip and sleeve aren&#8217;t connected to the power &#8212; they&#8217;re used for the light ring that indicates the status of the power.  The power cord itself is positive on the ring connector and negative on the back connector.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>So, after exhaustive testing to avoid frying my beloved laptop, I had a working power supply again.  This is why every home should contain a multimeter and soldering equipment.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am typing this from a 2009 model MacBook Pro, while my wife uses my previous laptop, a PowerBook G4 circa 2002. I loved my PowerBook, but there was a fatal design flaw in the power supply. The cord that came out of it was prone to weakening and breaking off. It failed in 2008, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[134,140,143,149,165],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-diy","tag-electronics","tag-engineer","tag-fix","tag-mac"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}