The power mod

A non-clothing-design post:

You know, desperation can be a great asset, especially when you lack the means and knowhow to fix something, however you MUST GET IT FIXED.

My Toshiba tablet PC has been victim to a poorly built power adapter cable. When symptoms first appeared, I thought there were problems with my batteries or with (heaven forbid) the laptop power connection, since it stopped charging altogether for a brief period of time.

This symptom came and went, and I just ignored it for the most part, thinking it might be some kind of glitch with my laptop.

Unfortunately for the past few weeks, the problem surfaced more and more often, so much so any slight shift in the power cable's position caused recharging to stop. My intuition suggested that something in the wire was being mangled or worse yet, crossing.

This morning was the day that it finally gave out, and decided to not charge my laptop indefinitely. That was a big problem, since my only source of internet was this laptop, not to mention my project files. I shut off the laptop just as a precaution (in case I need emergency power to boot it up and transfer something off of it), and began fiddling with the wire for half a day.

By 7:30pm I've already pondered all the possible ways I could rectify the situation. I could go online with the remaining power and order a replacement. This was such a poor option, since delivery to my apartment is problematic, and that the replacement adapter itself is 75 bucks (!!!).

Inspired by Nimoy's power adapter contraption, and self-assured that my waranty had gave out long ago, I decided to "man-up" and let the wire under the knife.

So, about four hours later, this is the result. And yes, it works!


Since I had no proper tools to perform this operation, I was forced to improvise. My tools were: nail clipper (does wonders for wire stripping!) a butter knife, and some pins. At one point I also used a vegetable knife, but it didn't help too much.





Here are the remains of the original power plug head, chewed to bits by my nails and my nail-clippers. Some form of irony to be found, there? I don't know.

What happened was, deep in the core of the plug head, where the hot wire gets near the ground to meet with the plug head, the hot wire's coating had been pulled back, revealing it to the other wire and causing a short. There were burn marks on the wires as well as the plastic/rubbery material surrounding it. When a short happens, a tiny beeping noise comes out of the power adapter. Interesting.

So the fix was simple. I stripped the entire plug head down, as well as enough wire from the end. I seperated the wires from each other (the ground was wrapped in a cork-screw shape around the main, seperated by a layer of wire skin whatever you call it). Then I wrapped each with electrical wire so they don't have a chance of crossing. Easy enough. The hardest part was digging through that plug head, which was hard as rock (hence me pulling out the vegetable knife!)

Alas, I might as well make it into a mod. I'm considering sewing stuff around it and making it 'decor'. Yomsain?