My laptops have to work for their keep and tend to get rather banged up with time. Now, the little LED ring on the charger plug did not light up when I plugged it in. Weird, I thought and jiggled it. No reaction. So I looked at the transformer block and indeed the wire insulation looked rather worn there. A bad connection? I jiggled the cable. Hmm, it's rather warmish, it's…actually emitting smoke! I quickly unplugged the lot. So, worn-through insulation and a consequent short-circuit. Nothing doing, scrap the transformer. Then on to eBay to find a replacement (try to buy a brand new one for an end-of-lifed model from Apple Store, not a chance). I located one in Hongkong, and bought it there and then for a quite small sum. Unfortunately this meant the delivery took some time, but today it arrived. I'm a bit suspicious: while there is an Apple logo on the box, the plastic doesn't feel quite Applish and there is no LED ring on the plug, so possibly it is a pirated copy, but it seems to work and my laptop is up and humming again. For the moment, until the disk gives out or something else burns.
2 comments:
I sometimes feel like building a small altar at my apartment to offer gifts to the Computer Gods and burn incense to the Matrix.
Perhaps it will help...?
Well, it is well known that for technical reasons you have to sacrifice goats to your SCSI chain every now and then, but then there are the Animal Welfare authorities to contend with, which I think is why computers tend to go flaky every now and then.
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