Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
Hi Ken, interesting writeup. I had a 3rd party magsafe 2 charger for my 2015 retina MacBook pro 13 inch that had a form factor I liked and worked for a couple years. It just crapped out and I decided to take it apart (because I could!) and poke around. I see it is a switching supply and quite standard in design, I even found a circuit design online that pretty much matched what I saw, component-for-component. The output is 0 volts and the LEDs don't turn on anymore = crap out symptoms. I saw that downstream from the transformer was where volts went to zero, but didn't poke further nor did I hook up my very old oscilloscope, figuring that even if I could isolate a failing component it would be non-trivial to get a replacement part. But I still have everything in case I decide to dig more, and then stumbled across your article to learn more about the plug itself, as well as learning that the cable and plug are worth saving - assuming the plug isn't bad! I also have some old but brand-name, higher voltage supplies that I could splice in like other commenters have mentioned. Anyway, thanks for the work and publishing your learnings, as it is encouraging and supportive to the rest of us weekend fiddlers!
Dec 7, 2022, 7:28:34 AM
Posted to Teardown and exploration of Apple's Magsafe connector