Another MagSafe fire!

[Brown Study]

yeah keep us posted.

Keep in mind this thread is a zombie. The post starting it was made in March of last year, and plattypuss made a total of eight posts, none of them newer than April 2006.

Since then, Apple's laptops have gone through at least three revisions, and the computer industry as a whole had to endure an epidemic of laptop fires, the majority among Windows machines, and most caused by bad batteries but some by other things.

Worrying about the cause of the fire that prompted the resurrection of this thread is misplaced.

 

[dtravis7]

Keep in mind this thread is a zombie. The post starting it was made in March of last year, and plattypuss made a total of eight posts, none of them newer than April 2006.

Since then, Apple's laptops have gone through at least three revisions, and the computer industry as a whole had to endure an epidemic of laptop fires, the majority among Windows machines, and most caused by bad batteries but some by other things.

Worrying about the cause of the fire that prompted the resurrection of this thread is misplaced.

Agreed totally. This is such an old thread. I have been keeping an eye out and so far not seen any recent reports of MagSafe fires.

It would be a good thing like Ben suggested to keep the connector clean from any junk like metal bits that Magnets can attract.

 

[pbrunnen]

Hi all,
I know this thread is ancient... but in case you stumble across it like I did... I had to rant. Please be forewarned...

Agreed, keep the connector free of foreign particles. Else your more likely to damage the power brick than the computer.

But, based on the original post... the problem had Nothing to do with the magsafe connector. It happened on the charging board just below the speaker.

Those power bricks, as with all switching power supplies (in my 15 years of experience with them), are great when they work but component failures typically lead to leaks where by much higher than normal voltages are allowed to reach the output leads.

I suspect that this is what happened and that higher voltage entered the computer and burned out the components. This certainly would cause the hard drive to be "fried" as mentioned by the author.

What I would post as a concern is that I have seen a few of the 65W adapters "work" on newer unibody MBPs. This is dangerous situation which I surmise might lead to a fire on the connector. The higher current draw of the newer MBPs (core i5 / i7) should never work with these. I am most concerned about this... Even charging disabled mode on my 17in. i7 draws into the 75-80watt range when in high gear. I can't stress enough that people use the proper electrical adapter with their equipment.

Sorry for the rant.
-Cheers, Peter.