Got a Dell Laptop? What's the charger pinout?

[Aguiluz]

So as you might see, Dells have propriety charging plugs. Instead of an outer ring (negative) and an inner hole (positive), the Dell connector has an outer ring (negative), Inner ring (positive) and a really really thin center pin (???).

I need to know what the center pin does. The original power supply on the dell conked out. I grafted an old 19V laptop PSU to the connector, leaving the center pin unconnected. The laptop boots but won't charge. Maybe it's 5 volts which I can give by putting a 7805 inline? Or (hope not) some propriety handshaking.

[z_s]

i was wondering the same thing. on my charger the pin broke so i was thinking about cutting the tip off my car chaarger and putting molex connectors on the car and home charger with the female end on the plug

[nitro2k01]

I recently found that out when I discovered that my PSU was a pirate PSU.
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The answer is that the center pin is used for confirming that the PSU is genuine. I don't know exactly how it is connected in a genuine PSU, but in my pirate PSU, it was connected to a chip that is basically a serial memory. The memory chip has only two pins, one for ground, and one which is used for power, and data transfer, two ways. (It works like this, first you apply a voltage for a small period of time, which charges a capacitor in the chip, then the chip will return data over the same pin)

In my case the memory chip was housed in a TO-92 package, with one leg unconnected.

I'm guessing a genuine PSU won't use a TO-92, but I don't know. If you can manage to open the old PSU, you might be able to find the chip and reuse it, unless it's surface mount. Follow the thin wire.

Oh and a word about that wire, it doesn't have regular coating, instead it has some sort of plastic layer on it which is difficult to solder through. One might not even realize it's a wire.

Oh, and before you go to these great lengths, check if there's a BIOS setting for this. My BIOS just warned me, but allowed it to charge. If your battery is dry as well, try removing the battery, then plugging in the PSU. That might make the computer more willing to boot and allow you check if there's a setting you can change in the bios.

[Aguiluz]

I've fixed this already.

I cracked open the original PSU and snapped the circuit board in two pieces. I put the pieces with the surface-mount components in an enclosure and wired it in.

It works. ^^

[z_s]

i just went on amazon and spent $16 including shipping on a new oem power cable

[Hobbes]

I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.