Please confirm: Compatibility of 65W Power Adapter A1021 (and some PA history)

[dan.dem]

I have an additional Apple Power Adapter A1021 for my 2004-PowerBook, I want to give away. I found a Posting with probably compatible devices. Can somebody please confirm?

Instead of posting the lengthy list, I want to boil it down to:

• all iBooks beginning with the 2001-Dual-USB G3 up to the last G4.
  
• all G4-PowerBooks from the first Titanium to the last G4
  

So, this means all portable G3 and G4 Macs introduced in 2001 and later are equipped with a 2.5 mm mini-jack plug. Is this right?

The power rating is 65W. Is this enough even for the 17 inch PowerBooks?

And for my curiosity: Are there lower rated PA with compatible plug? When was the A1021 introduced?

I have a faint remembrance my friend's Titanium had a Yoyo with mini-jack. Is this right? Was the A1021 the direct successor of it?

Thank everybody in advance!

 

[Cory5412]

There is a split in the iBooks. I think it's from the G3 to G4, as far as I know. The 1-USB (clear plastic/toilet seat) and dual USB (white plastic) use the older bigger power adapter and the G4 iBooks use the newer thinner power adapter, alongside the G4 PowerBooks. (though it's also possible there is a date-based split and the later G3 iBooks switched to the smaller connector, I don't happen to have any later iBook G3s on hand.)

The earlier/bigger power adapter is also compatible with 1400/2400/3400, and I think 190/5300, and I think the PowerBook Duo family (when undocked/the battery chargers), but of course you shoudln't run a Pismo or a fast iBook G3 off of a 2400's 24w adapter. The 1400+ 45w adapter will run my iBook G3/366. I believe the Pismo used a 45w adapter as well.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Almost correct. the split happens at the clamshell iBooks.  It works out like this:

PowerBook 190/5300 use the same adapter and it's much smaller than the others below.  The jack on the motherboard on these machines also happens to be a weak point and I've seen plenty that have gotten loose to the point they don't work or just broken off in normal use.

PowerBook 1400/2400/3400/PowerBook G3/Clamshell iBook G3 all can use the same adapter, which I want to say has a 9.5mm barrel size (?)  The earlier PowerBook x400s and PowerBook G3 had a black rectangular adapter and the clamshell G3s and later PowerBook G3s (starting with the Pismo?) have a yo-yo adapter, but they all put out the same specs and have the same size barrel.  There's a good picture showing the difference between the two yo-yos below that I borrowed from "ibook-clamshell.com" with the newer yo-yo (dual-USB iBook G3, iBook G4, PB G4) on the left and the older yo-yo (clamshell iBook G3) on the right.



All newer iBooks (dual-USB G3 and all G4 models) and PowerBook G4s have either the yo-yo adapter with the smaller barrel size (7.5mm?) or the standard white brick.  They can take either the 45W yo-yo/white brick or the 65W white brick.  Only difference is that the 65W white brick charges slightly faster.  There were at least 3 revisions of the white brick.  The original one had a metal cover on the barrel, and if I'm not mistaken was subject to a recall.  The later one had a glossy white plastic cover on the barrel and came in the aforementioned 45W and 65W flavors.

I can't speak to what would happen using a 24W charger on a machine that expects 45W, but these machines are new enough that I'd imagine they would just act like no charger is plugged in at all.  Current-ish machines on the PC side will toss a nastygram at you if you plug in a lower wattage charger than they expect/require, at least the EliteBooks. zBooks, and ThinkPads I've used do.  Interestingly enough though, if the machine was powered off the lower wattage chargers would still charge the battery, you just couldn't run the machine and charge the battery off the charger at the same time.  That was something I found out in a pinch when I didn't want to get out the 330w brick for my main machine but had a 90w brick from a secondary one handy.

 

[dan.dem]

Thank you Cory5412 and EvilCapitalist.

So, the situation regarding the G4 PowerBooks seems mostly clear, they are compatible, and there may be no higher rated PA. The 65W should also be able to power the 17". Do you agree?

iBooks are also mostly clear. As an original owner of a "Clamshell" (yes, it actually looks like a "toilet seat") I'm aware of its 3.5mm plug.
We also agree upon G4 iBooks: 2.5mm plug and compatible to A1021 PA.

However, there is inconsistent information about the white G3. iFixit shows a 2.5mm connector in its instructions for repairing the DC-in board of a white G3. But the list I was referring to in my original posting mentions the "Late 2001" iBook G3 as the oldest compatible. This would exclude the original white G3 iBook, meaning that it may require a 3.5mm jack based PA? Probably somebody has a first-hand experience with the first 500 MHz G3 or can direct me to an authoritative source.

Now this may go a little far since the problem is 95% settled. I thank all contributors.

@EvilCapitalist: Postscript about the PowerBook 5300 power plug.
My PB5300's power connector survived probably because I used a short piece of plastic tube to bridge the gap between plug and connector. Strain on the plug is then supported by the 5300's body plastics instead of the fragile connector and the logic board. This fix is not possible for the other ports and sure enough the ADB port became eventually unreliable. My PB5300 was a desktop replacement with literally all ports in use (Apple 16" display, SCSI-CD, 2nd hard disk, keyboard, mouse, printer and PC-card modem) and to my astonishment the other ports survived.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Yes, 65W was the highest available at that point and would power the 17" PB G4.  It wasn't until MagSafe was a thing that they went any higher than that.

I can also say definitively that every white/snow dual-USB iBook G3/G4 is able to use the same charger (the second gen yo-yo, or any of the white bricks).  I've got "many" dual-USB iBooks, from the original 500MHz G3 that only had 64MB RAM onboard, on up to the last 12" G4/1.33GHz, and they all work/charge just fine no matter whether I'm using the second gen yo-yo, a 45W white brick, or a 65W white brick.

 

[dan.dem]

Thank you EvilCapitalist for making this clear. So its pretty simple:

Apple's 65 W Power Adapter A1021 works with ...

1. every PowerBook G4, Titanium and Aluminium, all sizes, and
   
2. every _white_ iBook G3 and G4, also all sizes
   

A word about "under-powering" laptops.

Interesting to hear that your laptop will charge but will not power up while charging. I am actually doing something similar at the very moment to a 15" Unibody MacBook Pro. It's on a 60W adapter not the 85 W it came with. This causes rarely problems, but sometimes does. First, if the battery is totally drained it refuses to boot up for about 5 minutes until the internal battery has received some charge. And, in some very rare high power demand situations it still drains the battery while on the charger, and will eventually fail when the battery is empty. But this has happened to me only once. At least it will not throttle the CPU to 1 GHz as in Intel-Books without battery.

 

[ghost180sx]

I've got 3 G3 powerbooks (wallstreet, lombard, pismo) that I can't use because I don't have a decent adapter for them. I picked up a yo-yo but then found out later it's the second gen type, with the smaller connector. The other supplies I have all don't work or work only if i wiggle the cables or twist them in weird ways. They are also all third party and likely nowhere near as good as the originals. I hesitate to order any more from eBay (Apple or 3rd party) not knowing if they will solve my problem permanently. They can be quite expensive to get here in Canada, as the shipping and currency conversion adds up fast!

Has anybody ever solved this issue once and for all of how to fix these old adapters? What about permanently fixing the problem by getting rid of them? What do people do?

 

[dan.dem]

My two yoyo-adapters failed both at the cable going into the transparent plug. I never had the jack itself failing. However this may be an issue with cheap slightly undersized plugs of third party PA. Other possibility is you have failing connectors in your PBs. But all three failing? Unlikely.

When I fixed the power-cable of my clamshell-iBook's yoyo, I had to slice open the original plug. The instructions I used are gone (or I just cannot find it anymore). But I found an article of how to replace the plug by an standard 3.5mm headphone-style-jack. Nothing else is used in the original Apple PA, just that they wrapped that metal tube around it, giving more mechanical stability and probably shielding.

https://www.instructables.com/Replace-the-DC-plug-on-an-Apple-iBook-silver-"yo-y/

If you want to do surgery on the original transparent plug I may find a pdf of the original instructions I used.

Why not buying locally or at least from your home-country? Sure there are some sort of classifieds. I use eBay only as a last resort.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

I've had tips fail where they weren't making good contact with the jack on the machine and I've had adapters fail because the cord frayed where it connected to the yo-yo or the brick, but I've never had a jack fail on the machine in normal use.  It was always due to physical damage of the port, like if the laptop was plugged in and fell striking the plug at an angle, or someone tripped over a cord and the cord got yanked out at an angle.  The sort of mishaps that were exactly the reason Apple came out with MagSafe  :lol:

@ghost180sx I see what you mean about shipping to Canada not being cheap.  I do have a NOS first gen yo yo if you're interested, which should fit a in USPS small flat-rate box.