Laptop from Made-in-China. How to make, repair and upgrade power supplies for laptops and notebooks. Links to free do-it-yourself instructions. If you have written a do-it-yourself guide yourself (or if you know of a report not linked here), please submit a new entry.

A complete disassembly to fix and resolder the little circle PSU port which went inside and somehow snapped of the motherboard. Inside this laptop power from the AC adapter goes to the motherboard through the power board. When the power board goes bad, the laptop stops working at all and appears to be dead. In order to get access and replace the power board the entire laptop has to be taken apart.

A power charger socket repair guides, with take apart pictures. It seems that many NC100 owners plug in a third-party power supply instead of running the machine on batteries. Unfortunately, the standard-looking power connector has its polarity reversed from what is usual: The outer side of the connector is +, the inside is -. Alas, a fuse in the NC100 blows up when you get the polarity wrong.

This results in a dead machine. Null modem cable trouble: The normal way to communicate with the NC100, lacking a disk drive, is to use a null modem cable, but standard cables don’t work here is the fix: solder a wire between RTS and CTS on the NC connector - short pins 7 and 8. “A surgical guide to the Amstrad Notepad Computer” includes a table of what is in the NC100, a block diagram, IC’s and PCMCIA card connector pinouts.

How to fix a broken mains lead and other tips and tricks for repairing the laptop. How to detect and repair the fuse to revive a dead laptop. How to repair the power connector (in French). DC power plug disassembly. Power jack and power supply schematics. The DC plug of Apple Power Adapters: have you ever wondered about how the illumination in the DC plug of the DC adapter of your PowerBook or iBook works.

Occasionally the cap broke once when I was trying to unplug the connector, so it revealed its internals. DC power adapter plug repair HOWTO. Repair your macintosh power cord: Tired of Mighty Apple charging you beaucoup $$$ for those badly designed power adapters which break all the time. Disassembly and power connector repair. Overclocking, cleaning the keyboard, changing the CAPS LOCK light to a red LED, adding a hard drive activity light, adding a ADB port in place of the modem, repairing the AC adapter port.

How to get rid of a “clicking noise” inside the power supply of the docking station. How to fix the powersource’s connector by soldering. Fix loose sound ports, display hinge and the power plug using a tongue depressor. Replacing the original hard disk with a bigger one.

Soldering the power plug (in German). 65W AC power adapter repair. How to repair a 45W AC adapter, a step-by-step guide with pictures. Inside the 65W power supply, an attempt to repair. This notebook sometimes had adapter issues, the cord frays inside because of the stress from wrapping it up around the adapters “ears”. The solution: Tear it apart and replace the broken section. The tools to use are heatshrink, chisel, hammer, razor blade (for cutting and stripping wires), and voltmeter.

Additional items are tape (electrical, duct, vinyl) and fuel hose. How to replace the original power supply cable with a standard cable (Norm IEC C5, KSS 25, 2. 5mm stereo jack) (in German). How to fix a laptop power adapter. How to fix a loose power supply plug. Disassembly for removal of mainboard and for resoldering. Pictures from inside the laptop.

Voltages on the power supply interface and battery pinout. Circuit diagram of the 4 MB memory module. Circuit diagram of the 16 MB memory module. Motherboard outline with chip product numbers. Broken AC power plug repair. The power jack started failing intermittently. The laptop started switching from AC to battery power on its own. In order to switch it back to the AC power you have to fiddle with the adapter plug and find the right position.

If the laptop failes exactly the same way with another adapter, the conclusion is that the DC power jack is not making good contact with the motherboard and has to be repaired. Inside this laptop the DC power jack is soldered to the motherboard. If the jack is broken, you’ll have to unsolder it and replace with a new jack. How to repair a bad power jack on for under 20.

This slideshow provides good quality pictures of the power jack repair process. The cause which broke the power cord is too much wiggling. How to fix a loose power flex cable connector, which prevents the notebook to power on. A quick fix to run a laptop from a DC-DC convertor.

The only trouble is, the laptop has an odd square plug and the convertor only has round plugs. An in-line adaptor made from a pen barrel solves the problem. In a this laptop the power jack is soldered to the motherboard.

If the laptop looses power intermittently when you wiggle the power plug, most likely the power jack is damaged and has to be repaired.

In January, I wrote about the YoGen, a hand-cranked power generator for portable devices. Pulling on the YoGen’s miniature outboard-motor-like chain to get a few minutes’ talk time was not a great experience, but another temporary power generator may be a better idea.

The Solar Surge, from NovoTek, uses the sun to charge an external supplemental battery enclosed in a case that surrounds the iPhone. According to the company, this is the first solar charging solution approved by Apple, and it works with the iPhone 3G and 3GS and the iPod Touch.

A two-hour session in the sun provides about 20 minutes of talk time. And to help figure out how much charging is needed for other tasks, the company provides an iPhone app and Web site calculator. Input the type of weather, plus how much talking, movie watching and music listening you plan on doing, and the app will tell you how much solar charging you need to keep your iPhone humming.

The charger is available only on the company’s Web site; the iPhone version is $80, while the iPod Touch model is on sale for $53. Both are available in either black or white, with other colors to come.

While I haven’t tried the device, the one factor that for some may be a deal killer is the size. The Solar Surge looks to about double the thickness of the iPhone, a prospect that may not appeal to those who like to keep things light and simple.