Laptop salvage

So the other day I unplugged the AC adapter from my laptop and it returned the favor with a puff of smoke. Some testing later on showed that the entire laptop works perfectly fine except the AC plug is shot (smells of burning and no power reaches the laptop when plugged in).

Again, everything works fin provided I use the battery, but now that it ran out of juice I'm looking for a way to salvage the components.

So far, all I've come up with is making an external hard drive from the laptop HD and stick the processor in a shuttle PC barebones kit. That would run about $200 total. Which is less than what it would cost to repair the thing.

Anyone know of a good way to salvage more out of it? Are their no boards out there that take a pentium M chip and some SODIMM RAM? I saw one Mini ITX board, but it consists mostly of serial ports, which is not very useful for me.

any chance of soldering on a new AC port?

pop the hood.. take out board..de-solder the current one..pop-on new one?

My soldering skills are somewhat to be desired..but Im sure you could handle it. :)

make your own projector with the lcd screen.

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Originally Posted by whispers

any chance of soldering on a new AC port?

pop the hood.. take out board..de-solder the current one..pop-on new one?

My soldering skills are somewhat to be desired..but Im sure you could handle it. :)

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No, not something I would feel comfortable doing. I would be afraid of my soldering job starting a fire while I was using the computer. Not something I would like with a laptop

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Originally Posted by lefteyewilly

make your own projector with the lcd screen.

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How? There's no way to use the LCD screen without buying a $200-300 LCD controller, I thought. It would be cheaper to buy a new LCD monitor from a store than use the laptop screen.

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Originally Posted by yasunobu13

Are their no boards out there that take a pentium M chip...

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Yes. AOpen i855gmem-lfs is the one I'm eye-balling now. Uses standard DDR RAM though, not SODIMM. Here's something I was just reading.

If it means anything to you, I'll be doing the same thing as well.

Are you sure it's the AC port? It sounds like all you need is a new AC adapter. If you have a volt meter, check the outputs. Sounds like the transformer coil shorted out and the amperage is a lot higher than the laptop is expecting. The AC port is usually just that; a port. The business end is handled in the power block.

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Originally Posted by gerbick

Yes. AOpen i855gmem-lfs is the one I'm eye-balling now. Uses standard DDR RAM though, not SODIMM. Here's something I was just reading.

If it means anything to you, I'll be doing the same thing as well.

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Not bad, here's what I was looking at in the time being.

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Originally Posted by Genesis F5

Are you sure it's the AC port? It sounds like all you need is a new AC adapter. If you have a volt meter, check the outputs. Sounds like the transformer coil shorted out and the amperage is a lot higher than the laptop is expecting. The AC port is usually just that; a port. The business end is handled in the power block.

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If that's true, then there's no harm in buying a new AC adapter and returning it immediately if it doesn't work. Sounds like something I'll try out tomorrow.

Who makes the laptop? Is the connector end proprietary? Make sure you match the voltage / amperage.

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Originally Posted by yasunobu13

Not bad, here's what I was looking at in the time being.

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Good looking out... I just bought the 855 chipset version... it's cheaper there than anywhere else.

Looks like Gen might have been right. It may be a combo of bad AC adapter + battery. I'm seeing how much to replace through the manufacturer.

I'd hate to scrap the thing, it's only two years old.