PowerBook power port sucks, thoughts on a fix

[jjhammerstein]

Anyone who has ever had a mac laptop pre-macbook knows that the old power ports are terrible, they break, fail to make contact, fall off of the cords, everything that could possibly go wrong. There happens to be a USB port right next to the crapport (well, there's phone-in in between) and I was thinking about rewiring the port to that and throwing a male USB jack on the cable. Can anyone forsee any problems with this? (other than the repercussions of sticking how-ever-many-amps into an innocent USB port by accident. )

[bicostp]

Have you ever had a Powerbook 5300? If you haven't, you have no idea what a terrible power supply port is. (It's the size of a pencil lead and the plastic sleeve that's supposed to support it wears out after the 5'th use, so even the slightest bump temporarily knocks the power out. And since nobody's made batteries for this thing in 14 years, wall power is important. )

What model is it? I'd stick with a power connector from Radio Shack, since pushing X volts at Y amps into a USB port is anything but good.

[jjhammerstein]

It's a Powerbook G4 Aluminum from the last revision they produced.

An exterior connector (it would have to be) would not be nearly as spiffy though.

[MegatronUK]

Are they the ones that have connectors that look a little bit like phono plugs? If so, a few of years back some guys in the office had a couple of them and a some ibooks with the same type of connection; the power supplies were forever breaking.

We even had a Titanium where the user would keep getting mild electric shocks from the corner of the case!

[Bibin]

You could just add a standard DC in jack, that'd be simple.

The mild electric shocks are due to your grounding being faulty.

[timmeh87]

How the heck do you think the 3.3v and 12v rails are going to get power?

[jjhammerstein]

How the heck do you think the 3.3v and 12v rails are going to get power?

I don't know, maybe from the switching regulator on the logic board?

[palmertech]

Those are just phono jacks, I think. If you remove the little metal reinforcement ring around it, you could make a really sturdy headphone jack plug.

Just don't plug it into anything else!

[timmeh87]

Pretty sure the all the power comes from switching regulators fed by that DC input jack. they dont work backwards

[jjhammerstein]

The cord is two-wire co-ax.

[eurddrue]

Maybe jjhammerstein will get his computer fixed soon