• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

macbook pro ugly power hack today

Osgeld

Banned
Our player piano tech has a pretty nice year or so old macbook pro, and today he happened to snag the power cord just right where it ripped mostly out of the brick, as it had kind of wrapped around a table leg

freaking out, I was like "so order another", which he did but he needed this computer over the entire weekend for a recording session he was on, and it only was reporting 10 min of battery life left, so I gave him my patented wicked look and said "hang on a min", and dashed out to my car

returning in hand with ... A electric hot knife, and my spare/old soldering iron (what? you dont keep a hot knife and soldering iron in your trunk? phht, noobs), anyway I cut the power brick along its seams with the hot knife, popped that bugger open, removed the old wire leads, cut the cord soldered it back, put it back in its shell and wrapped it up in duct tape :lol:

its ugly, but it works just fine (and there is a nice glossy new one on its way next week so who cares for the future) and someone owes me lunch ;D

I took a couple pic's but my celphone is so crappy all you can see is a white blob in light bloom

 

~Coxy

Leader, Tactical Ops Unit
I did the exact same thing with my PBG4 brick. Unfortunately it's a bit "sticky" now due to the gaffer tape glue oozing a little from the heat. Still works fine though!

 

Christopher

Well-known member
(what? you dont keep a hot knife and soldering iron in your trunk? phht, noobs)
I love you man :D
I probably will do that soon. I already have a bench grinder, Milwaukee hammer drill, drill bits, and my tool bag of screw drivers, nut drivers, allen keys, pliers, and wire strippers. I'm on the road to mobile repair. :p

I wish more people would do stuff like me and you do dude.

 

register

Well-known member
Did a similar repair job to a PB180 power brick long time ago, replacing the broken wire by some rugged microphone cable and a billet style custom made plug. It is still my favourite power supply because of the soft rubber cable.

I have a habit to collect spare parts and tools of all sorts in different places (like a squirrel), but on the road I only keep a foldable pliers/knife combination tool with me.

 
Top