Plaidophile

This is the second time I've had to do a quick-and-dirty annoying-as-hell solder job on the plug of the iBook power supply.

The first time, the connection in the plug itself failed (because the little sleeve had come off and so it was able to flex itself to death), so I had to open it up and resolder annoying braided wire to the PCB inside. I then bought a new PSU and kept that one as a backup.

This time on the new PSU (which has a different sleeve design to address what was apparently a common problem), it's even more insidious — the wire somehow managed to pinch itself against the little strain-relief sleeve and shorted out, burning up a bunch of the insulation and making it so that I had only a couple millimeters of good wire to work with.

I think the power supply is the Apple laptops' achilles heel. If the power supply fails, the laptop is useless after a couple hours, no matter how good the rest of the system is.

At least this repair job is holding out for now, and it seems sturdy enough. I hate soldering braided coax.

I guess Apple needs something other than OS upgrades to keep their revenue stream going... ;)