Thinkpads Forum

For those who have struggled to find a 20V power connector for the recent generations of ThinkPads, there's another option for you. This is an adapter that matches a common 5.5mm x 2.5mm plug connector to the Lenovo 20V plug.



See http://www.bixnet.com/spdcpocotipf.html for full details.

Since its quite easy to get hold of solderable 5.5mm x 2.5mm plug connectors, you can put one on the end of the cable from a suitably rated 20V power supply, and use the adapter for getting power into the ThinkPad.

Cheers,

Bill B.

That's an interesting adapter but as far as I can tell, the 20V DC plug is triaxial: http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/20v_dc_plug.jpg

If there are indeed three wires going into the 20V DC plug (I haven't butchered a 20V supply just yet), I wonder what you would do with the "extra" wire for the 5.5mm/2.5mm plug...

rkawakami wrote:If there are indeed three wires going into the 20V DC plug...

Everything I have seen strongly suggests there are only two connections to the plug on the genuine Lenovo Power supplies.

There are certainly 3rd party Universal power adapters out there that use a two pin style adapter plug, and which work fine with 20V ThinkPads (when set to the correct output voltage).



BTW, don't be mislead by the red colour of the plastic, the plug in the picture above fits perfectly into a ThinkPad socket.

Cheers,

Bill B.

I bought a power lead from eBay (it is not an original IBM power lead but works perfect) which i used to modify my universal car charger to charge my T61.

Works fine

It was this seller: http://stores.ebay.com/parts-stores

Do a search on "Thinkpad" in his shop and you will find the cables.

rkawakami wrote:That's an interesting adapter but as far as I can tell, the 20V DC plug is triaxial: http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/20v_dc_plug.jpg

If there are indeed three wires going into the 20V DC plug (I haven't butchered a 20V supply just yet), I wonder what you would do with the "extra" wire for the 5.5mm/2.5mm plug...

I am not sure about it (has been a while ago that i made that cable) but as far as i can remember it had 2 wires, 1 blue and 1 brown one.

Certainly an interesting looking option.

The rubber shoe of my plug has come apart from the main connector, so I have been looking around also. I'm not too keen to pry apart my transformer unit to resolder the plug.

Have any of you guys tried simply heatshrinking the plug?

When I look at the picture of that eBayer, the cable has THREE wires!
http://i.ebayimg.com/23/!B6NuhJQBWk~$%2 ... g~~_12.JPG