I have a Lenovo 11e Yoga Chromebook (Glimmer). The square lenovo charger is the worst. It looks too much like a USB port, plus I only have one Lenovo computer, so using a USB-PD board to change it to USB Type-C just makes sense!
My particular device happened to have some pre-existing trauma in the forms of a broken trackpad and missing LCD. Not to worry! I can plug it into a monitor.
default charger. Looks too much like a USB port
comparison between the USB-PD board and the default charger
Had to add wire to the charger to make it reach just right
always use protection
everything in place. See the 120Ohm resistor on the left pad
Diagram of the mouth of the charger
ThinkWiki.org table
USB-C PD (power delivery) board. This one is set to 20Volts, but supports 5, 9, and 15
Let’s move quick through this. This was a task fraught with with mistakes, but I’m just going over the successes here.
I opened the thing up and yanked that power cable. Snipped the old head off and attached the purple and blue wires to the positive terminal and attached the black and orange wires to negative.
The orange wire is the “sense” line that tells the motherboard how many amps it can pull from the charger. For this laptop, it can draw a maximum of 2.25A at 20V. Multiply those together and we have 45W. When consulting the chart from ThinkWiki.org, it tells us that I will need to have a 120 Ohm resistor on that line. I didn’t know how to identify a resistor, but this site helped me. I had to dig through my scrap PCB bin for about 15 minutes, but I did eventually find a suitable resistor.
Test fit using my USB-C power meter to see if the thing is working
Close up. Only draws 0.14A while powered
Wrapped up and put in place
Making sure that it can comfortably sit in place
With the palmrest assembly installed, it had a noticible bump. I dremeled the pieces down later
Picture taken with the laptop off
ITS ALIVE
With my little contraption built, I wrapped it in EMI shielding tape and polyimide (AKA kapton tape) and hot glued it in place. I forgot to photograph it, but I also removed the metal bracket that previously held the display hinge and dremeled the area out in order to make the cable fit better.
The next step will be to replace the firmware with a custom coreboot image that will allow it to boot Linux and become more than a Chromebook!
This was definitely a step outside my comfort zone, but I feel more confident doing this in the future. Plus, I have 4 more USB-PD boards to get rid of, so you may see a similar post in the near feature…
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| The Chromebook in ideal conditions |
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| How mine currently looks |
My particular device happened to have some pre-existing trauma in the forms of a broken trackpad and missing LCD. Not to worry! I can plug it into a monitor.
default charger. Looks too much like a USB port
comparison between the USB-PD board and the default charger
Had to add wire to the charger to make it reach just right
always use protection
everything in place. See the 120Ohm resistor on the left pad
Diagram of the mouth of the charger
ThinkWiki.org table
USB-C PD (power delivery) board. This one is set to 20Volts, but supports 5, 9, and 15
Let’s move quick through this. This was a task fraught with with mistakes, but I’m just going over the successes here.
I opened the thing up and yanked that power cable. Snipped the old head off and attached the purple and blue wires to the positive terminal and attached the black and orange wires to negative.
The orange wire is the “sense” line that tells the motherboard how many amps it can pull from the charger. For this laptop, it can draw a maximum of 2.25A at 20V. Multiply those together and we have 45W. When consulting the chart from ThinkWiki.org, it tells us that I will need to have a 120 Ohm resistor on that line. I didn’t know how to identify a resistor, but this site helped me. I had to dig through my scrap PCB bin for about 15 minutes, but I did eventually find a suitable resistor.
Test fit using my USB-C power meter to see if the thing is working
Close up. Only draws 0.14A while powered
Wrapped up and put in place
Making sure that it can comfortably sit in place
With the palmrest assembly installed, it had a noticible bump. I dremeled the pieces down later
Picture taken with the laptop off
ITS ALIVE
With my little contraption built, I wrapped it in EMI shielding tape and polyimide (AKA kapton tape) and hot glued it in place. I forgot to photograph it, but I also removed the metal bracket that previously held the display hinge and dremeled the area out in order to make the cable fit better.
The next step will be to replace the firmware with a custom coreboot image that will allow it to boot Linux and become more than a Chromebook!
This was definitely a step outside my comfort zone, but I feel more confident doing this in the future. Plus, I have 4 more USB-PD boards to get rid of, so you may see a similar post in the near feature…
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