Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
Thanks for this info. I'm on a power adaptor crash course at the moment....
I know this is not a support forum but this might also be of interest to "Big Guy' in tracking down the issues in his faulty units. Any advice appreciated :)
My macbook 13" T-adaptor plug has been dying for about a year. Often there is no LED (or very dim), even when it is charging OK.
But increasingly it has either not registered as plugged in at all, switching my mac to battery power...... or has registered as plugged in but given me the status of "Not charging, power source : power adaptor".
Previous to this the cable wore out next to the brick, which I repaired. So I assumed the cable had now also worn out next to the LED plug (due to pulling it out of my macbook). Wiggling the cable in this area certainly helped to get the power flowing again (although only temporarily).
But after cutting out 5" segment of cable (which looked fine) the problem persisted, so cleaned the pins on plug and macbook. They weren't dirty, anyway, and it made no difference.
So I then dissected the plug thinking the wires must have come loose from the mini circuit board. Again all looked well, with no obvious heat damage, and they look tightly soldered on. So I didn't touch them.
But I noticed the circuit board moves very slightly allowing a slight gap to appear between it and where the 'pogo pins' connect to it.
One of the pins also fell out (is that supposed to happen?) .... so I put a tiny bit of solder onto the pin and pushed it down its hole again, pushing it with the tip of the soldering iron so it would heat up and (hopefully) solder itself to the circuit board to make a solid connection and stop the wiggling.
It seemed to work OK with the adaptor and LEDs functioning normally too. But when running CPU hungry apps (ones that get the cooling fan running constantly) the plug reverts back to its old problems, cutting out, dim/ blinking LED's and "Battery is not charging" status.
Very annoying!
Pushing the plug firmly into the macbook does help a bit, which supports the theory that it is the pins not connecting to the board properly....
Some questions (any thoughts appreciated!)
1. Is it possible the connection is so weak that the extra current drawn to run hungry apps (and the mac's fan) would cause it to malfunction?
2. How could I improve the connections? My soldering skills are not great and I'm afraid of shorting the board with lots of solder.
3. Should I try putting more solder onto the pins (if I can get them out again) and pushing them down with heat to make them stick?
Any other suggestions welcome. It's driving me crazy! As soon as I run any CPU hungry software the power adaptor quits on me.
PS system profiler says battery is OK, although it's obviously not getting any younger (2008).
I will check back.. thanks.
Nov 16, 2013, 9:46:47 AM
Posted to Teardown and exploration of Apple's Magsafe connector