My m1210 won't draw AC power anymore?

Hey guys,

I got my refurbished m1210 about 2.5 years ago. For months now, the battery has been useless, which I'm not surprised about -- I've never replaced it. We're talking like 3 minutes on full charge. So I just typically keep it plugged into the wall (with the battery in).

This worked fine until a couple months ago, when I'd be computing away and then I'd get a little popup about being on battery power or something, as if I had unplugged from the wall. Usually a little power cord jiggling would solve this. Then, in the last few weeks, on 2 or 3 occasions the jiggling didn't work and so the comp shut down (AC power LED not even flickering). After minutes/hours of intermittent trying, the AC power light would suddenly come on again and I could use my comp again.

Until now. It's been a day and I just can't get the thing to realize it's plugged in. The power cord appears okay because it has the glowing green light, as usual. Does anyone have any ideas? Even with a completely dead battery I should be able to get AC power, right? Thank you!

 

Sounds like your power jack was getting loose and is now broken. The jingling you had to do attests to that.

There are two options for you: you can replace the motherboard entirely or just replace the power jack. If you're handy with a soldering iron, the latter should be a cheap and easy fix, but if you're not, you may just have to go down the more expensive path of replacing the board.

You can also try taking it a local computer shop and seeing if they'll do the soldering for you. If you replace the board, you can probably recoup some losses selling the broken board on eBay as well.