I pulled apart my 11 year old lenovo laptop (e320) and soldered a USB-C charging port in it. By using a USB-C PD trigger module that had a 20v selection on it. Works quite well.
That middle pin is used to identify the charger. So the firmware knows what type of charger you use and also it will tell you if you get a counterfeit charger
@@LindonSlaght i dont know.. my laptop complains about counterfeit/unauthorized charger after I fried it's middle pin chip. Sometimes just shows "cannot determine charger type". If it can't detect the chargee type, the firmware will limit the CPU performance.. 930mhz in my case
@@LindonSlaght depends on the quality of the offbrand charger, some arent properly filtered and put noise on screens. but in the end its a easy way for lenovo to say well you arent using our charger so you're SoL and on your own there
5:30 The signal pin is used to detect how much power the charger can output. By not connecting it to a resistor or shorting it to ground the system thinks it can draw 90W.
@@budyniozaur For this plug it goes like this: 10K - 65W Not connected - 90W 0R - 135W 1.5K - 170W With the square one you can go as high as 230W and as low as 35W (Which is around the same power I'm comfortable passing through this particular model of trigger pcb)
just watched both of these laptop videos of yours after having the first randomly reccomended to me. got to say that i'd love to watch more of these types of videos, your editing style is unique and your obvious skill at beating electronics until they work the way you want them to is entertaining. i was suprised to see the five videos and few hundred subscribers after watching this, you're definitely deserving of way more. keep it up, watching people abuse/maintain electronics and buy thermal paste with really funny names is definitely shaping up to be a fun pastime.
Looking at your workbench makes me feel better about myself. Mine is just messy if not worse, and I always tell myself that I should organize and clean it up, but I work well in chaos and I know where everything is at; if I cleaned it up I wouldn’t be able to find anything. Love the content, keep it up!
Tbh, I like the rectangular ones that look like a USB-A adapter found on thinkpad produced around the mid-2010's. (My T570 does at least come with USB-C charging support tho)
This opens a new possibility to build this thing instead buying an used charger. At worst case, nobody sell the charger. I believe the module is not expensive either although the charger that supports PD won't be cheap. Great project!
I wonder how easy changing the controller would be in a more modern Lenovo that uses the new rectangular plugs. I have some that only pull 65w and use that fat plug. It might be cool to 3d print a new "port hole" and swap to usb-c for the convenience.
The laptop opening process just gave me flashbacks to that time i broke the hinge of my laptop because i forgot to take out a hidden screw while opening it
Great job! Now you got a future-proof laptop to outlast that bulky proprietary charging dock. Speaking of, that extra pin in the charging connector is to signal the maximum power the charger can deliver. Some Thinkpad models would throttle the cpu frequency if you got a weak charger with no battery attached.
Awesome idea, I’d be curious to see if a newer variant using a slim tip would respond well to it or if the software would pitch a fit about it being an unsupported AC brick.
@@ligametis the point would be to eliminate the need for extraneous items in the bag. Dongles get lost all the time, slim tip will eventually be a pain to get. Not that I daily drive anything on a slim tip, but it'd be a good experiment.
what i learnt from having many braided cables is to not trust them they always break or theres a bump sticking out of the braided part which leads it to break
I can tell you from experience the epoxy repair to the hinge will last for a while. but will be wrecked thr first time the laptop gets a little drop to a hard surface. I did the same repair to my laptop hinge. I recommend you get online and start searchiung for a replacement for the broken part. They are still out there. Good job though. And I love the usb-c port addition.
This makes me want to do the same to my laptop. But I'm afraid because I'm not an expert in these things although I've already opened my laptop several times to clean it, upgrade the RAM, SSD, apply liquid metal compound. Anyway, good content! I really enjoyed this video and the previous one where you actually upgraded the CPU. Subscribed!
If your laptop also as pluggable connector for the charger on the PCB like this Lenovo has, you could try to buy a matching connector with a cable. This way you don't have to solder onto your Laptops PCB. You only have to solder the wires to the USB-C PD Board. The other side just plugs into the board.
@@DrLamalama no need to solder anything, Aliexpress sells ready-made cables...also, there are people making drop-in replacements for the original power port module.
this is content i really like! u should try to upgrade a lenovo thinkpad t430s, i had one and i really wanted to upgrade it myself but sadly it broke and some of the keyboard buttons didnt work i tried fixing it but sadly i failed, it would be nice to see a upgraded lenovo thinkpad t430s.
Damn, sucks about the screen hinge mounts. They DO make special types of epoxy to bond plastics, works WAY better than super glue. And given the high stresses in that area, I'd also try to reinforce it even after the plastic epoxy with JB Weld or Loctite epoxy or similar. But that's a bit easier said than done when you'd prefer to do it in such a way where the laptop can still be reassembled and even disassembled again later in the future. Tricky, but doable, I've done it that way before with excellent results. But the trick there is to get everything aligned flush with the screen hinge brackets while the epoxy cures, but also not having the epoxy cure to the brackets themselves. I found that a very light touch of WD-40 from a Q-Tip on the brackets can prevent epoxy from curing onto parts which you don't want it to. Anyways, just some thoughts on techniques to fix busted screen hinge mount points. Edit: I see you did apply epoxy around the area, good good. But I mean applying it in a way that's PERFECTLY flush, by using the hinge brackets themselves to shape the epoxy as it cures. If this is done correctly, you can REALLY fill the area in with a big gob of epoxy (use common sense where all you apply it though), and then install the brackets with a touch of WD-40 (only on the brackets, not on the casing, for any possible future disassembly), to perfectly align and flatten out the top of the epoxy. It ends up bonding with all that much stronger of a hold.
Thank you for sharing your experience on hinge repair. My experience is to drill through the broken hinge base and use 2 mm screws and nuts to secure the hinge. I will use your epoxy technique if the hinge mounting base is not leveled with the other hinge.
@@frank-t6857 I do hope it proves as helpful for you as it has for me in the past. I should probably also add, that you don't necessarily need to remove the hinges from the screen assembly to do this. Just use some pliers and carefully adjust the hinges where they sit evenly at the exact balance point while the epoxy cures. Note on that: This might not be advisable for a shop with cats roaming around LOL!
Hi Ash Glad I came by your video. I bought an old Lenovo ideapad 110 just to have windows to try out a DAW. The DAW and plugin I found is great but the CPU keeps crashing the DAW. Do you think doing what you did should help and is the ideapad he same thing as the thinkpad. Also having issues trying to boot from a flashdrive but it might be a format thing cause I use linux otherwise.
There is no need to install the PD chip. You can buy PD to barrel plug adapter and unlike me, you can find one that fits corrently instead of having to search an adapter for hours. I have a Sony VAIO btw. Other than that: Nice video.
What a great idea this is, really want to do it to my gaming laptop but something tells me it's not the best idea to give the laptop 100w from usb c, when it thinks it can pull the full 230w...
I'm surprised that it charged without the signal line from the charger. I've had laptops before that refused to charge the battery (but would happily still run) because the pin in the middle had broken.
Tbf I took my new - old acer E5-521, to SSD it & on of the hinge screw mount was snapped off the chassis (same as yours) however I think it had been broke for some time before I got the laptop - interesting idea - where did the USB C charge block come from, how much etc?
According to my guesstimations it would only take about 24 days to fully charge with a 100w USB C charger. Or maybe you could drive it for 15km every 24 hours.
Great job utilizing the power function of the usb c connector. But what about the data? Would it be possible to also make it functional for data transfer if you were to connect a phone to it?
If you need to fix hinges then just melt it further into the plastic if you have enough space before it goes through the case. Then use a longer screw if you "welded" it too far down. I did it to a several old laptops and only couple of them needed some more welding. This method is better because superglue does not stick very good to some plastic or don`t last long.
Why take out the cpu though? The cooler I understand, but theres no screws under the cpu? the only reason I can think of to need to take the cpu out is to upgrade or otherwise change it. unless you were worried about damaging the die somehow?
Would it have been possible to solder wires from a USB port to the usb-c port to get the full functionality since it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0? Or would it interfere with the other USB port.
That is something that crossed my mind. But then I saw that the usb-c trigger module wasn't very friendly to solder extra wires to, and then I would need make sure that 20v doesn't feed into the 2.0 type A ports ( maybe with some diodes ?). Because the trigger module doesn't supply 5v... Then I gave up thinking about it. I would never use USB C 2.0 anyway ( and I couldn't use them at the same time). Usb-c 3.0 is a different story: I've bought a 'pci-e to USB 3' adapter and it works (only tested it once in 2.0) in the empty internal pci-e solt. I could run a USB cable from that to an extra USB C port.... An interesting option if I wanted to risk another tear down
Is it possible to just connect the direct positive and negative port, and on the other side use a GAN charger that will know the amount of voltage and current needed?
Well it's a Lenovo so the hinge always goes. My ideapad 320s hinged is busted and I've dropped it twice. My new Dell latitude hinge feels so solid and robust.
It seems you get lucky with the Lenovo power supplies. Dell systems use an identification chip in their power supplies. Connect a non-Dell power supply to the system and it refuses to charge the battery. So no USB-C modifications allowed unless you have an old Dell PSU to harvest the identification chip from! With regards to the overheating issue that you faced with the Quad core CPU one solution to this is under-volting the device rather than under-clocking it. Most of Intel's CPUs will tolerate under-volting really well and this will directly translate into reduced power consumption and less heat. So the same performance basically but for less power draw. The easiest way to experiment with this that I've found is with a program called throttlestop.
