possibly the most useful accessory Lenovo never made? *PIC*

[tarvoke]

right-angle adapter for (almost) any 20V Lenovo/IBM PSU!!!

I know it won't interest some people at all. others may wonder how they ever lived without it. maybe it's just some extremely-well-kept secret that no one talks about?! and... if you have spares laying around in plain sight, they will mysteriously disappear when your thinkpad-owning friends stop by.

so: fits basically any R6, T6, X6, Z6, X200/300, corresponding docks/ultrabases, etc. etc. ... anything with the grey/yellow 20V big barrel "advanced" plug, so probably quite a lot of non-thinkpad Lenovo machines as well.

pick your favorite of spamazon (my usual choice) or fleabay, it's the same company/product/price:
http://www.amazon.com/BiXPower-LC80-Con ... 004L6WW46/
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Right-Angle-Con ... 0763919097
(and unlike many of the small specialty connectors like this, where you get that wonderful "free 2-4 week shipping" from E/SE-Asia, these shipped USPS from California, 4 bucks total for 5 pieces.)



EDIT3: direct link to manufacturer's own site/store, for completeness. also, as mentioned in a later post, these are definitely triaxial and will correctly identify whichever P/S you're using. NB: their compatibility list only mentions 65W and 90W adapters (even though it mentions T500/W500. which, in a purely mechanical sense is certainly true). they were nice enough to email me back and said it is rated 6A. so, 135W brick may be a little over the edge @6.75A./EDIT3

EDIT2: just now, for fun/silliness, I stuck 2 of them together (no idea why I never tried that before) and of course it works fine. well, you never know. and I can think of a few rare cases that could be useful. and, yes, I then tried with 3, lol, because why not. /EDIT2

I have no idea why Lenovo never made these (or at least right-angle variants of some 20V supplies). maybe I'm the only person who finds it the most useful convenient thing ever?

I have no idea who this company is; I only came across them last year when trying to see if such an accessory even existed. I have not tried any products of theirs, aside from these awesome doodads (of which they appear to be literally the only manufacturer)

I can say the adapters are solid and well made (if a bit overpriced) - I picked up 5 total, 2 of which see occasional use, and 1 which has seen daily abuse for about 3.5 months now. zero problems.

any other good stories about a small/ridiculous accessory you never realized you couldn't live without?

Admin edit: Added picture and PIC warning (since I added my own image downthread).

[emeraldgirl08]

Great find! I really could use one...or two!

[elray]

I never understood why IBM/Lenovo didn't feature 90-degree connectors; the straight connectors permit too much strain on the cable, which eventually fractures ... and the fireworks that result are quite harrying.

[rkawakami]

I think you're about 4 years too late: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=91992 Oh, never mind; different kind of adapter.

[tarvoke]

I think you're about 4 years too late: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=91992

ha, that is awesome! I figured someone else must have wanted one at some point, and must have posted about it, so I couldn't believe it when I couldn't find anything by searching (to be fair I was lazy and gave up before getting that far back!)

still, how could it be such a well kept secret?!

[tarvoke]

well, I can still feel a little proud - the earlier post was about the C15 model, which still needed some modding to fit. LC80, no modding. yay!

[tarvoke]

everyone needs at least 2! too bad they are not exactly inexpensive. I'd happily wait on cheap ones with free 4-week-shipping from HK, instead of paying ~8-11 bucks per.

the things are not labelled in any way other than stamped (er, more likely molded, sorry) "LC80" (model#) and "BiXPower"; and no marked packaging, just individual ziploc bags. so I'd have to assume they are bulk-imported from a fab across the Pacific?

but - whoever made it is definitely not making junk - the plastic is very hefty and well-molded/nicely-finished, can barely see any seams. and the electrics/mechanics are quality. there is zero variation in appearance nor in fit/feel/operation.

(and, ugh, yes! - that's exactly the reason I wanted this last year - a perfectly good 65W brick became useless because the wires between the plug and ferrite-bead-or-whatever-it-is, frayed internally. fortunately nothing asploded, so technically surgery could still be performed, but I'd rather not unless desperate.)

[rkawakami]

I remember Bill posting about a right-angle adapter for the (then) new 20V plugs. But that one was to convert the older 16V style plugs into a 20V version. It was assumed that you'd be using a proper 20V supply that terminated in the 5.5mm/2.5mm plug. My question back then was what was to be done with the center pin, which now has been confirmed to identify the wattage of the supply being used.

[tarvoke]

I remember Bill posting about a right-angle adapter for the (then) new 20V plugs. But that one was to convert the older 16V style plugs into a 20V version. It was assumed that you'd be using a proper 20V supply that terminated in the 5.5mm/2.5mm plug. My question back then was what was to be done with the center pin, which now has been confirmed to identify the wattage of the supply being used.

I was wondering about that too, after reading you guys' earlier thread. if one was to try a only-2-pin solution and a 65W brick, I guess the charging circuitry/software would assume it's 90W and possibly overheat the brick? (or worse?)

the LC80 is indeed triaxial, and my lazy-self was curious enough that only a minute ago I dug up a meter and checked it out. the verdict: it simply passes along whatever resistance or discontinuity of the connected PSU. which is the common-sensical way it should be constructed, but you never know.

fairly sure the above conclusion is correct and not pilot error:
- control test: an (unplugged! lol) 65W brick does in fact show me 9.99k-ohm between pin and ground. as it should be.
- testing the LC80 by itself, my meter says "O.L", which means discontinuity. making sense so far.
- connect LC80 to 65W brick, I get 9.97k-ohm (hey, it's a very cheap meter!) - good.

maybe I should have checked that out before using the thing for almost 4 months, ha

[rkawakami]

Which is why I've never figured out why the engineers decided that an open circuit in the "signal" line would automatically mean that the laptop would assume a 90W adapter is being used. As Spock would say:

"Logic dictates that one should design for the safest result when dealing with the public."

ref: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=92127

[tarvoke]

especially when it's the public!

it is quite odd, agreed!
- safety, somehow?!
- restricted/tied to pre-existing design of the charge circuitry, for no good reason, just "it has to be that way"?
- simply arbitrarily-chosen markers -- as long as the engineers set up the system to understand "this means that", then the software can look up in its ridiculously small table (or register, where-ever) of 4rows/2columns. and the numbers are far enough apart that it's difficult to screw up.
- something about the bricks being designed/produced in different "eras"? (this could go along quite well with "arbitrary")

interested minds are vaguely-curious to know my money is on arbitrary!

although I did once semi-fry a mini-itx machine by plugging in the 12V 2-pole barrel connector while the P/S was online. I think a lot of us often plug live DC power into devices all the time and most never had a single problem. this was the single time in my life that a DC plug arced. result: partially lobotomized cmos and/or bios.

which makes me almost but not quite think the center pin could be for something like suppression (or in cases the plug is live but not connected to anything and you (somehow) manage to short center-pin to +) but yeah, then why is 90W disconnected? and another is 0-ohm?! and seemingly no meaningful pattern to the values.

nah, I will stick with easily-distinguishable-arbitrary-markers. with possible historical context. also, reverse-vampires.

this raises another interesting question - can/does lunix deal with this? the most I can see through ACPI is some battery info, and AC power present/absent. even firing up SMAPI/EC (which, by default, most(all?) distros don't even ship the binaries - you have to build the objects yourself), I can get a lot more detail on the battery itself, but still only AC present/absent.

this is either:
- possibly dangerous/stupid because the linux software has no idea what the safe charge rate is. rather hard to believe this is the case. or we would see a lot more charger meltdown disasters
or:
- the charge circuit hardware/firmware itself understands which brick is which, and handles the charge rate. the software (at least in windows) is somehow able to identify the brick. and can charge at different rates in different scenarios, but never draw more than the maximum. but then what happens in linux? the various power manager applications have their various scenarios but don't actually know the maximum until the hardware simply refuses to go past it? or some sort of "safe" base rate, that may alter over time by fudging/averages?

(there was a very small hex table in the SMAPI sysfs that I didn't look into, is possible there's interesting stuff in there)

[rkawakami]

While a right-angle connector can be very useful in some cases, there are a several instances where it's limited in application. For example, my T410 and T420 systems with the extended battery would necessitate that the plug exit only to the left (as viewed from the front of the system). Or maybe "up", but that's going to put some strain on the cable as it would be bending backward. There's other situations where the right-angle plug would get in the way; X6 and X200 Ultrabase have USB ports right next to the DC jack, for example. On the X300 and X301, the VGA port is next to the power jack. These are just the systems I can see next to my desk. There's probably others. Having the cable exit straight back is universal as the cable can then bend right or left or up or down.

One thing that can be useful when using a right-angle adapter is that the repeated mate-unmate cycle is on an item that can be easily replaced if the female end gets damaged or "loose". I use a right-angle adapter on my Garmin GPS unit even though the power cable already has a right-angle connector on it. Normally when plugged in, the cable drops downward as that's the typical path for the power cable to go. Since I am constantly plugging-unplugging the GPS (I don't leave it in my car overnight), I found an adapter that's designed to accept the micro-USB plug in the same downward orientation but it ends up plugging in "sideways" to the GPS. So the cable exits downward as before and if I damage the socket, I throw away the adapter and plug another one in (I've got several spares but I haven't needed to use them yet).

[tarvoke]

totally on board with the whole "replaceable commodity intermediate-thing" vs duty cycles - angled, straight, extension cable, whatever you can get. especially when the device is rare/expensive, or the cable is rare/expensive, or both. even if not, I'll try to do it anyway as long as the doodad is inexpensive, just as good habit.

bonus when it also increases convenience, and when it relieves stress on one end or the other or both - looks like you found a pretty good match! although it's funny, the lifetime of micro-USB (10k cycles) is supposedly designed as twice that of mini-USB, but I feel like I've only ever seen/used many more flaky micro ports, and many more robust mini ports, than vice versa.

stuff that really worries me on super-delicate radio equipment: hirose/ufl and MCX (or even worse, MMCX) connectors. solution: get a pigtail to FME (super-robust, gas-proof, excellent high frequency/resolution, and ridiculously easy to find inexpensive adapters to whatever other BNC, SMA, F, N, etc. etc. etc., in any quality & resistance coax you desire. also quite nice because easy to fish FME through walls/ceilings or only have to drill tiny holes and not have to worry about that huge honking N connector you need on the other end.) - attach pigtail firmly in place and never worry about the tiny delicate end, ever again. connect the FME end of the pigtail to your FME end of the cable that goes wherever / does whatever.

as for the LC80 in general - no argument here, it's not for everyone. especially when probably the most common use case, as you say, and I agree, is on a desk/workbench where it makes the most sense for the cable to go straight back. and esp if the cable basically never moves ever, which is also not uncommon.

and definitely yes, I'd already ran into 3 of those cases you mentioned: x6t ultrabase (in my specific situation, it's ok b/c its cable almost always needs to be anywhere between straight left and immediately-straight-down... but not always), x200 ultrabase (for me on this one, the cable usually needs to go directly right, but I really need those usb ports sometimes), and finally x220t (same battery issue you mention, but lucky me, once again this one needs to be anywhere between straight left and immediately-straight-down). without the bases also works well for me, since the need is still usually to be somewhere near the vicinity of immediately-straight-down. if the cable needs to shift laterally or bend slightly, it becomes much more likely to do so further down, and the small section of wire remains completely straight.

what would be great is a nicely-flexible short extension cable (say 3"-4" not including length of connectors). gets around some of the blocking problems, and even if it eventually frays inside, the P/S itself is still good because there would never be constant stress on that silly 1" section of wire.

I don't disagree the regular cable bends well enough, even in that small section, but that section has 2 major flaws: tiny radius i.e. extreme curvature/tension, and tightly constrained on both ends - i.e. the generated stresses are so much greater than if you bend some other part of the cable. and in most of my experiences, that section is nearly always the place it prefers to bend - the worst possible place.

just my particular usage is different than majority, I guess. I almost never am at a desk or other permanent/semi-permanent surface where the cable could be fastened to keep the small bit straight and bend in a more sensible place somewhere else, if bending is needed. I usually seem to be in situations where it goes directly for that #1 stress point.

[rumbero]

While we are at it, this Schuko plug is yet another userful accessory Lenovo never made: www.ebay.com/itm/140481666953.
Using this item myself since ages to get rid of that insane useless cable amount typically associated with those PSU's.