As I blogged about earlier I recently fixed the random shutting down of my 15″ Powerbook G4 and that has been great. Unfortunately just before I fixed the powerbook the power jack started getting all wierd. At first I would notice the battery wasn’t charging or it wasn’t noticing it was plugged in at all. I would jiggle the cord a little and Voila! it would be functional again. Then it started to need me to pull the cord in such a way to make the connection. First looped up and secured behind the screen, then pulled taut in front of the screen, pulled through the gap between the screen and the bottom part of the laptop and secured by leaning the screen back to keep the cord tight. Annoying.
And now nothing works. It will simply not recognize that it is plugged in. It is now asleep after running out of battery. I think the cord may have finally given out because it looks like the plastic cracked near the plug-in part of the jack. However what I’m really afraid of is that the internal part of the jack has cracked off the power board since it is only held together with a bit of solder. And that is too big of a project for me to attempt on my own since you have to take out the logic board to get at the separate power board and then re-putty the heat sink etc… all stuff I don’t want to do. (says the woman who forcibly removed a part of her powerbook, SDER)
I haven’t read good things about this problem, just that it happens to laptops all the time and it sucks. I’ve ordered a new cord off ebay and will attempt to get it going with that. If that doesn’t work I guess I’m off to the certified Mac repair shop.
