Mr Burns Blog

My early generation MBP charger Has 5 pins on the connector, one decided to become stuck as the spring mechanism decided not to spring anymore.

The pin also looked a little burnt. My laptop stopped charging, for a week now I’ve had to constantly disconnect the charger from the computer and reconnect it carefully to get that pin to make contact and keep my computer powered ( though still not charging up).

Today I fixed it (temporarily , till I get a new charger). All it required was : a grinder, sand paper, & razor knife.

I started grinding down the magnet surrounding the five pins, it helped with the connection since the one pin was jammed too far back to make contact- now the connector sits closer to the contacts as the magnet is shorter.

It wasn’t enough – easier to get a connection but still bad and didn’t want to charge, so I went a step further, cut off the white plastic casing with a razor knife, removed the magnet and continued to sand it down more ( I removed it as to not grind the pins as I’m grinding the magnet).

After pulling the pins completely off the small circuit board at the connector and breaking the solder that held em on- I decided that was a bad idea, I still couldn’t get the bad pin out to try and fix it, so I pushed the pins back onto the board and the broken solder is making enough contact to power it up , replaced the magnet back onto the pins and connected it and it’s working great!

But like I said – temporary fix, this could possibly be a fire hazard with no casing around the connector.

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