T42p, continuing charging saga

[sbjoe]

Problem currently is with the socket into which the charger plugs. Unlike my T60p, the socket is loose in the case and appears to not make reliable contact with the outside connnector on the charger's plug. Upshot is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the connection when the charger is plugged in which is most of the time. First question is whether it's normal for the socket to exhibit any play when the plug is jiggled - for lack of a better word - and assuming it's not is this condition repairable? Second, there appears to be remnants of what might be a conducting medium on the inside perimeter of the socket. Is this my imagination or was that part of the socket originally coated with such a conducting medium that might have resulted in a more reliable contact, and if so does anyone have any suggestion as to how the apparent erosion of this material might be remedied? Third...? Thx

[sbjoe]

Disregard this post ;(

[sbjoe]

Hard to believe nobody's experienced this. Anyway, I used some Caig deoxit on the charger's connector and the socket in the T42p with a cut down toothpick for application and the tip of a shop towel for cleanup. Connection on might be marginally improved but I still get intermittent disconnects when the plug is wiggled. These tend to lead to loss of internet connection, expecially if disconnects are repeated as happens when moving the machine around a bit. Has anybody experienced anything at all like this, and more significantly, has anybody found a fix or effective workaround?

[Adda]

You can buy all new power sockets for ThinkPads, to fix the problem.
You'll have to do some disassembly to replace it, but no soldering needed.

Here is an example:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-IBM-THINKPA ... 3ccd017839

[sbjoe]

Thx Adda,
Disassembly I'm good at. The other thing, not so much, but it gives me something to live for.

[sbjoe]

You can buy all new power sockets for ThinkPads, to fix the problem.
You'll have to do some disassembly to replace it, but no soldering needed.

Here is an example:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-IBM-THINKPA ... 3ccd017839

Thanks again Adda,
I picked up a couple of sockets through the link you supplied and can happily report that the old T42p is back in the pink, humming along nicely. I've another software issue, but that's for another post & quite possibly another forum.

[systemBuilder]

It is not abnormal to have the yellow charging / power port on your T4x Thinkpad fail. In 6 years of using T4x thinkpads (T40, T41) from my employer, I had the following failures :

(a) Bad Keyboard (esp. space bar)
(b) Bad scratchpad
(c) Bad charging port
(d) Two disk drives went bad.

My charging port would still work if I torqued the banana plug sideways. Don't do this as I did this too much and the cable on my charger broke off, ruining a perfectly good charger. I'd solder it back together but I cannot find the banana plug any more.

I bought a stash of yellow charging ports on ebay, they are only about a dollar each. Charging ports (along with spare scratch pads and spare fans, just the fan and not the heatsink) are cheap insurance against total failure of the laptop, over the long run.