[clug] Dell Notebook AC Adapter Test

Mike Carden mike.carden at gmail.com
Thu Apr 26 13:04:13 GMT 2007


For those following along at home, here's how it panned out. My
initial diagnosis was wrong in every important respect, however...

We had a fine time conducting a strip-to-bare-chassis of the Dell in
question and learned a good deal in the process. Various bits of fluff
were removed along the way. Unfortunately, with screen and both case
halves removed, the cast chassis still obscured the vital bits of the
PCB dealing with power, so we put it back together.

No screws left over, no assembly mishaps, and it all seemed to fire up
quite nicely.

Luckily, Brad Hards had brought along the exact same power supply to
try and we plugged it into the reassembled machine. It worked!

So the original power supply has failed in such a way as to supply
enough current to start and run the laptop with apparently full
functionality barring the ability to charge a battery. So poor
regulation or high impedance in its output circuit. A very odd way to
fail, but good news in terms of a relatively inexpensive thing to sort
out.

-- 
MC


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