So recently, I went to plug in the charger for my 9 year old Macbook Pro, and… nothing. No heat, no charge, no indicator light. Well like any other rational person, I tried a different outlet because it’s the outlet’s fault, right?
My Macbook Pro charger had died. I could not charge my laptop, because Amazon prime has yet to predict what item I need and pre-order it before I even know (failure). That aside though, I did what every average person in that situation would do, and cracked open the charger brick.
I will preface this with the following: I have working knowledge of electrical circuits but am by no means a trained electrical engineer. That being said, I’ve taken a lot of things apart.
After prying apart the two halves that made the outer casing, I revealed the circuit board. Upon a visual inspection, I observed that a capacitor had puffed up. Well that could explain things, huh? I unscrewed the board from the casing, and was finally able to see where the contents that once filled this proud capacitor ended up.
So the capacitor failing created an open circuit, which was honestly the best type of failure I could hope for. Well… I could have tried fixing it, or I could just accept the loss and buy a better charger: I decided to do the latter. I ended up coming up with a brilliant and convenient solution that allows me to charge my laptop.
… and I’m kidding! I went with a charger that can output 60W at 16.5V over USB-C and had other ports to charge other devices. Frankly, I am glad that my old charger died, because I found one that would be better for traveling ( less chargers to have to carry around). And for adapting USB-C to that magsafe L-connector, I just used this.