Where USB type-C ports go to die
I’ve been using a laptop on my couch for many years, always charging it using the lightning port; a USB type-C port.
I often get off the couch, forgetting that the cable was there, and trip on it. Over time, this broke the port but luckily there was a second so I could keep charging.
Last week, after several more “trips”, the second USB port broke. My heart started racing as now I only had one charge left!
Luckily, almost all of my data is on an Unraid server in my basement and also in Jottacloud so I just needed to backup a few things before the battery died.
The USB ports had sunken into the laptop so I took the motherboard out and this pic shows the result.
The ports had completely broken off the motherboard! It’s my fault but the design is really bad as the ports had no additional support from the laptop frame or casing.
The lesson learned is to buy a magnetic USB PD adaptor so that the cord just comes off and doesn’t damage the port. They cost about $20 on Amazon https://a.co/d/dabG8iS.
Here are a couple of photos of the adaptor on my wife’s HP laptop.
I’m not a fan of Apple but at least something they were smart about with their MacBooks was the magnetic charging ports.
Now I need to get my laptop fixed!
After searching for a bit, I found this guy in Chicago.
Web: http://www.powerjackrepair.org
Facebook: http://facebook.com/powerjackrepair
YouTube: http://youtube.com/powerjackrepair
He has tons of videos showing his work.
If you ship the whole laptop it costs a bit more. I wanted to save on the repair cost and shipping so I decided to take the motherboard out.
Because I broke this connector on the board, the rate will be a big higher.
The guy providing this service very responsive to my emails.
Now I just need to save up before sending the motherboard to Chicago. In the meantime, I’m diligently using the magnetic port adaptor on my wife’s laptop and it’s already saved me multiple times!
