Gregory's ServerHOT TAKE: if you design a laptop with a power supply that looks like this, you should go to jail.
Laptops should be powered by TWO WIRES and the voltage, amperage, and polarity should be WRITTEN ON THE BOTTOM, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW
 80 comments
 oh wow it's been a minute since I've seen one of those. The one I had back in the day, the shroud had this weird notch in it and I was never quite sure if that was an intentional design feature I seem to recall it being semi-common for......-some- brand of inkjet printer? that grey color feels HP to me so I'm gonna guess that, and it feels like a memory around 2005 vintage my fundamental problem is that I'm passionate about changing a lot of things about the computer industry but all of them are things that would need to be changed back in 1989. well I beeped it out and either this is a different connector, or they lied and pin 1 isn't ground, only pin 3 is. it has been ZERO DAYS since I have had to open up a laptop just to figure out where to shove volts in yeah I've not seen this kind of RAM module before. some kind of Epsom custom thing, maybe? AH-HA! that was the wrong manual. They DID change the pinout! Thankfully, it's compatible. how long has it been since you've had to straighten the pins on your RAM chips? Because for me it's "today", but I imagine for everyone else it's either "never" or "when I tried to upgrade my IBM 5150 PC" or "I had one of those computers with ZIP RAM" yeah this RAM module uses a 44-pin (2mm pitch?) connector. That's great if you want it to be possible to accidentally plug your hard drive into your RAM slot or vice versa! Normally that's not remotely possible for so many reasons. I seriously can't think of any era of PC hardware where that was even remotely possible, for physical connector reasons. You could use the same connector for both RAM and hard drives back in the early PC era with HardCards and RAM upgrade ISA cards, but that wasn't really a case of mixing up the connectors: they just both plugged in the same generic place. THE PINOUT IS FOR THE POWER CABLE NOT THE POWER CONNECTOR ON THE LAPTOP meaning: yeah, I borrowed someone who has... nosmia? Whatever the term for "has a sense of smell" is. It's got Magic Smoke Stank now. Pulled everything out. It's a small computer! This is everything but the keyboard, hard drive, floppy drive, and screen. apparently instead of having a "POWER GOOD" pin like ATX PSUs do, they went for the opposite, where they have a pin that tells you if the power is sus *amongus noise*      @foone I came here to ask if anywhere it specified which view that pin out was 😅  @foone That wasn't uncommon on early laptops, everyone had their own form factor. Toshiba had a different module for every blasted laptop model. Infuriating when you want to upgrade your Satellite or Libretto, even when they were new.   @foone@digipres.club    @petrillic @foone That would be my guess as well. Split the current over two conductors so you can get a better per-metre price on the cable.    @foone sounds to me like the first order of business is a time machine, then @foone what are the pins for? im gona assume one of them is to connect C4 @foone quick reminder about NEC PC98 abomination of laptops, https://deadinsi.de/@yottatsa/111751280012640821  @foone Imagining whoever has this adapter frustratedly trying to plug it into a PS/2 port. @foone While I've repaired enough DC barrel plugs on laptops to hate them for that application (they're fine for anything that isn't moved around a lot), sound electrical practice would suggest that a male DIN connector would be the suitable one for the half of the connector that isn't powered when exposed. The C64/VIC-20 had this problem, except in the VIC-20 revision that took an AC cable directly.   @foone Hot take for the hot take: I prefer this style connector (so long as they list the connector type and pinout) because they can make a more secure connection and be fully waterproof, but for some reason every manufacturer takes a standard connector from someone like amphenol and adds a single extra cut to the plug shape to make it purposefully incompatible without using a file.... Everything should have part numbers listed.  @foone Looks like it would be real easy to insert that the wrong way with a bit of force.  @foone Not some USB C monstrosity where if you get unlucky your laptop decides to charge the grid? 🤡   @foone OK but what if... TWO of those, with a big Y cable, to feed 660W into your laptop?   One of my most ingenious hacks in its simplicity was to make a cunty dell laptop power plug that was using third rail as a shitty "buy my overpriced proprietary power supply" rail. As far as I could tell, it was not drawing any current, it was just a lame "security check". Hacked with a single resistor. |
@foone@digipres.club meanwhile usb c