Some Hardware Repairs

February 12, 2023

In which I discuss recent repairs and upgrades I've done for several of my devices.

Written on a MacBook Pro while listening to the Bugsnax Original Soundtrack by Seth Parker.

For the past several years I've been using a 45 W MacBook Air charger for my Macbook Pro, because the real 85 W MacBook Pro charger I had got burnt out from a power surge or something at a previous school; new ones cost $80 so I never got it. But using the much lower power charger meant that my comptuer would often still die even when plugged in, and it ruined the battery life because it was acting like an online UPS where the battery was being constantly charged and drained.

But recently I realized that Apple hasn't even manufactured computer hardware with MagSafe 2 in four years, so I said fuck it and got a new charger before they decided to no longer manufacture them—yes they still even make MagSafe 1 chargers, but since they seem to be completely redoing most of their hardware in the past few years it's a matter of time. Since I got a fresh new charger, I figured I might as well get a fresh new battery as well so I can actually use it more than an hour without being plugged in.

The battery arrived Friday but for reasons I only got around to installing it today. As with last time it was intensely scary, because you have to apply a lot of force to remove the old battery even with 100% isopropyl alcohol to loosen the adhesive.

Although it wasn't quite as scary as last time where the battery was a bit spicy.

I also think I'm finally gonna just purge the Mac OS X partition. I kept it around because it's the only way to get firmware updates for periphrials, but whatever I haven't booted into it for years and the last time I did the OS was so old it refused to upgrade. It'd be nice to reclaim the space, if I can figure out how to grow an LVM volume upwards…

I also pulled apart my MZ-R900 MiniDisc recorder and dusted off the optical assembly, because every month or two the head gets enough dust stuck that the lens can't focus anymore. You can't just stick a compressed air duster in to get it clean, the orientation of the optical sled makes you remove the front plate to get into the nooks to clean it.

It happens far too often and is far too severe, so I think the optical sled has some actual mechanical issues that the dust excaberates. It's something that's likely impossible to actually service without now-nonexistant equipment though, so I'm just gonna keep doing this.