Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
For what it is worth the data pin does not seem necessary to power the laptop.
The magsafe jack on a couple of my chargers had failed in the last couple of months and it seemed in both cases that there was no longer a faithful connection between the pogos and the circuit board. Compression and more solder didn't help.
So I stripped off the circuit board and soldered to the contacts of the two V+ and GND pins of the magsafe jack. Then epoxyd it to a breadboard and broke out the pins to the charger itself (wires stripped to the shield and positive wore) with a 47kOhm resistor.
The laptop won't charge but is happily being powered which is enough for now.
In retrospect I wonder whether the pull-down resistor is necessary as I assume the macbook will apply the load anyway. But the bodge has gone back to the client for the next couple of weeks until a new cable arrives and I have time to assemble it.
Mar 6, 2014, 5:30:09 PM
Posted to Teardown and exploration of Apple's Magsafe connector