Tim Dobson's Blog

:(
It seems that my laptop's power supply fault has reached another level. The Charging Pin has fallen out and now I have no way to charge it.

For the last two years or so, the pin in the centre of the hole where you put the charging plug in has been sort of loose. It would not stay in the middle. This caused some problems whilst it was not the end of the world - I could simply just hold the laptop upside down so that the pin was in the right place, insert the charger, turn the laptop the right way up and then fiddle around so it got a good connection.

However, a few days ago I got a nasty suprise; it stopped charging. I picked the laptop up to investigate and heard a rattling.

Not good.

Quickly powering it off to avoid anything shorting if possible, I shook it in the don't-do-this-at-home kind of way. It continued to rattle. It was at this post when i noticed that the charging pin had fallen back inside the laptop case.

There was nothing for it, I would have to open the case.

The small catch was that I didn't have any screwdrivers with me to undo the tiny phillips screws I needed to get into the main maintenance area, which didn't even give access to the area near the power supply.

Thinking on my feet I improvised with part of a piece of plastic made from the kind of material that credit cards, membership cards and SIM card surrounds are made out of. At last that SIM card had come in useful!

Removing the piece of plastic covering the maintenance area, I help the laptop up again in a don't-do-this-at-home kind of way and shook it.

Two things fell out onto my bed:

A phillips screw and the charging pin.

The charging pin was interesting. It seems basically undamaged except for the contact where it was soldered to something being marginally bent.

The problems I now face are:

• I have important work stored on my laptop and no way to get it off easily. I guess I'll get some blank CDs and hope I have enough battery to burn it all off.
• I have no-where to put all the photos on my digital camera at the moment
• I'm getting very bored with nothing to do at the flat
• Whilst they are cheap, I'm spending a small fortune on internet cafes where I don't get as much functionality as I might like
• I'm not able to do the work and business I have to do whilst awat in the the way I would have liked.
• I have a laptop that powers on but doesn't charge for LugRadio Live and ten subsequent days in Maderia.
• I'll probably have a Neo Freerunner by then which I will have to hope will not need computer intervention to get it on it's feet.
• I have to try and get this charging pin re-affixed. This is problematic because the area where one needs access to is possibly the least accessible part of the laptop. It probably means taking the screen off which obviously involves a risk of damaging the connection there.

If you think you can help and/or are skilled at this sort of thing, don't hesitate to contact me

I suspect it requires more than the average hacker to fix - I have been through it with my friend before whilst the fault was intermittent, and concluded it was such an inaccessible area that it wasn't worth working on.

For the record, the laptop is a Medion Mimm - not anything which is marginally standardised like a (s)Thinkpad