iBook Power Saucer Cable Break

If you have an original iBook, you'll notice that there are two metal "horns" on the inside of the hings that connects the screen to the keyboard.

[picture missing]

If you put your power cord in there, the horns will conveniently squeeze it, causing a short, and a big white spark. All is not lost, and there's no need to go and buy a new power saucer (aka power yoyo).

Here's the step by step.

1. Cut away the damaged part.

2. Cut away around an inch of the outer insulation on both ends.

3. Pull away the braided outer cable, and lightly twist it into a cord around 1/3 to 1/2 inch long. Do this to both ends.

4. You will see the exposed inner wire. of this, cut away just 1/8 to 1/4 inch of insulation. Don't twist this stuff.

5. Push the inner wires against each other, and roll it with your fingers so the wires "weave" a little bit. Now, with a low wattage (15 watt) soldering iron, solder the two wires together.

6. Repeat with the outer cables. That's it. Make sure you use at least 1 inch of thin solder or 1/2 each of medium solder on each. (And make sure it's electrical rosin core solder, not the stuff for stained glass.)

7. Wrap the inner cable in a couple layers of electrical tape. That's the hot wire. Then, wrap the whole thing up in more electrical tape. (Regular tape will do in a pinch, but, electrical will last a lot longer.) Make sure that the tape covers the insulation on both pieces of wire, to help relieve the strain on the solder joints.

From now on, you'll have to be careful not to break these joints.

[hr]

After another year or so, the wire leading right into the proprietary power plug started to flake out on me, due to flexing of the wire, so I ended up buying another power supply, this time, from MCE. These replacement adapters are around $40, which is less expensive than the official Apple adapters, which retail for around $70.

Once I got the new adapter, I tried to repair the old plug. What this involved was using a razor to cut away most of the plastic around the back part of the plug, exposing the bare wire. The outer braided part was severely damaged, and green greasy corrosion indicated arcing that destroyed the wire.

The fix was to strip away the insulation, preserving as much wire as possible, and re-soldering the wires together.

[hr]

The MCE adapter flaked out on me after a year. I thought it was the power regulator in the unit dying, but, recently (2004) I tried to cannibalize the cable to fix up the power saucer, which had been re-enlisted into service after the MCE flaked. The MCE adapter's cable cause the OEM Apple adapter to flake out too.

Not only that, but the problem had a similar symptom: if I put my ear up to the adapter, I could hear a "clicking" noise. I couldn't place this symptom at first, but, when I saw that it migrated wherever the MCE's cord went... that seemed to pinpoint it.

The MCE cable is weird, because it has a built-in choke coil. This is that big lump on the cord. Still, I could not believe it was the choke. They're just iron rings with wires around them. They don't contact the wires.

So, I decided to cut the choke off, just for the helluvit, despite my suspicion that it wasn't involved. At worst, I'd have an regular power cable, just like Apple used. So I cut it off, and discovered that the wires between the choke and the power plug on the MCE were damaged. Both the outer braied wire, and the inner wire, were broken. When I pulled on them, they pulled right out of the insulation!

Despite these breaks, the cables had tested okay with the continuity tester. They were both hanging on with just a few strands, however.

Overall, these Apple power adapters suck. The MCE replacement adapter sucked even more, and lasted only one year! The sad thing is that it's not the electronics that are at fault, but the flimsy and brittle wiring. Because the plug at the ends are proprietary, they're going to be expensive to procure. These market-protection schemes really annoy!

If the companies would just settle on a generic power plug, life would be a lot easier and these laptops would be a lot cheaper to maintain.