Wonder if someone got in trouble for this
xanadu
Posts: 3,347

Laptop motherboard with some "external" circuitry. Possibly a mistake in the original board design?
xanadu
Posts: 3,347

Comments
...very, very common
Maybe not so much "mistakes", but definitely "after-thoughts".
What makes the difference is the quality of the work.
Back in the mainframe days we had an upgrade that was a piece of wire wrap wire and instructions on where to wrap it. It seemed like it was a $20k upgrade.
They also glued the DC jack to the mobo with a huge glob of something. Now when you drop the laptop and it's plugged in you probably break the mobo instead of just the jack. It is rare I take apart a laptop to fix it, but this was my moms so I offered to. It would seem every time I get into something like this I get the oddest issues.
This thing is going to recycle. The DC power jack isn't shorted, but when you plug in power it overloads the adapter into some fault mode as if it were. It stops producing power until the AC side is cycled. The power adapter itself tested okay for both voltage and current.
...copy that!
Same with mini's and supermini's, mind you the same upgrade cost a bit less. Those were the good old days.