Today I received an email from Tony Sakariya (tsakariyaATyahooDOTcom) who was experiencing a problem with the power jack on his Toshiba Satellite A75 laptop. He’s been able to fix the problem by relocating the power jack outside the laptop case away from the system board.
I would like to share with others a tip for repairing their Toshiba A75 laptop for the DC Jack and battery charge problem.
I have a Toshiba A75-S209 for a year now. After the first 3 months it developed the exact same problem. Battery would not charge and I had to twist and turn the power jack to make the connection. Since it was in warranty, I returned it and they repaired and sent it back to me. The problem recurred again after about 4 months and I sent it again and they repaired it and worked fine for 5 more months and it failed. This is a design flaw with Toshiba. Now that I am out of warranty, I decided to repair it myself. Your guide for dismantling A75 was awesome. Thanks for the info. Now here is what I want to share with others. Resoldering the power jack with a new one does solve the problem for a while but it will reoccur. Hence I decided to bring out a wire with the Jack outside. Of course it looks dirty but it is a permanent solution. I am attaching the photo of the repair I did. I got the DC jack from ebay and insulated it with a electrical insulation tape. Now it is working fine, I do the connection and disconnection on the dangling power jack outside the laptop and hence no chance of breaking the soldering outside.
• Coil the pair of wire one round through the ventilation grill before taking it out as shown in the picture above. This is to prevent any external shock or force being directly transmitted to the soldering joints.
• Now we need to connect a new DC Jack to other end of the wire. I purchased the new DC jack from here for a price of $6. Shown in the picture above the white wire is the positive terminal (+) and hence must connect to the inner ring of the DC Jack. Similarly the blue wire being the negative terminal (-) should connect to the outer ring of the DC jack. Refer the picture below on how the wires are soldered to the DC Jack. Be careful not to short the leads as they are very close.
• Now neatly wind a round of insulation tape over the wire and especially on the exposed DC Jack exterior. This will prevent any short-circuit and also give a better appearance.
Toshiba Satellite A70/A75. Disassembly guide with pictures.
Valued Comments.
Submitted by Binney:
The workaround relocates the jack externally. When I did this, a short occurred between the metal casing on the top cover (the one removed with the guitar pick). This happens if the solder repair is too tall. I covered my repair with electrical insulation tape and that fixed the problem. It took me quite some time to figure out where the short was and would like to save others the headache.
Comments #282, 286 submitted by Jake and John:
Size N: DC Power Jack #274-1576 from radioshack works perfect and looks great. Costs $2.99, easier to solder, snugger fit, 5.5mm O.D. x 2.5mm I.D.
Here are some pictures of the end result of the repair with
the Radio Shack type jack. I added one of those quick release
key holder that I had lying around as a retention holder.Here is what it looks like unplugged: Power tip unplugged.
Here is what it looks like with the adapter plugged in and
the key holder reattached: Power tip plugged.
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June 10th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Hi Andy,cj is correct. The white cable is positive and blue one is negative. The three points in a row are negative and electrically short, hence there is no harm in soldering the three points together as I did.
June 9th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
On the picture above, the positive cable is white and the negative is blue.
June 9th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Hey, im attempting to do the same thing, and I just have one question, you made it clear that the inside piece of the jack is positive and the outside negative, but, on the laptop itself, are the three soldered dots in a row positive? or is the single one behind it? thankyou
June 6th, 2006 at 8:21 am
Hello Jim, Well, the basic idea of taking the connection out of the box was to avoid any shock to the soldering points when we insert and remove the power plug. As I mentioned in the post, replacing the jack on the main board did work for some time but the problem reoccured owing to the fact tha there is nothing to take the force/shock. If there was a clamp on the DC jack or a holding to the case this problem would not have occured. Now I am confendely using the repaired laptop without any fear of breaking the soldering once again!
June 6th, 2006 at 8:15 am
Hello highspeeddirt, I haven’t worked on Dell Latitude CSx H500GT. Hence I am sorry, I am unable to provide any information on that. The service manual is not available even on Dell site.
June 6th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Hello Adil, I used standard 22 SWG multicore wire. Two of them, about 12″ each. On the main board you will see that there are four soldering points connecting the powerjack. Actually you will require only two points (one for the +ve terminal and one for -ve terminal). If you look closely you will 3 points in a row and testing it using a multimeter reveals that they are electically connected. so when soldering a wire over that you may solder all the three points together. I left the damaged DC jack intact and soldered the wire on the connection point on the reverse side. Then I took the wire out of the casing after coiling it one round on the case as shown in the picture so that any movement is not tranfered to the soldering points. After that on the other end I soldered the new DC jack. Be very careful with the terminals (+ve and -ve, the inside portion of the DC jack is +ve and outside is -ve). I used insulation tape to cover the open DC jack. If you would like, I can send you a document with pictures and explanation as I am aware how to post the images on this site. Please let me know if any clarification is required.
June 5th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
I tried something similar to what you did on your Toshiba, but I put in a new DC Power Jack from Radio Shack (Part # 274-1563). I had to enlarge the hole in the case a little bit, but now it works fine and looks like it belongs there.
June 3rd, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Have you ever worked on a Dell Latitude CSx H500GT? If so, how do you remove the keyboard and/or get inside to replace the fan, etc? Thanks in advance!
June 3rd, 2006 at 4:22 pm
What sort of a cord did u buy specifically? Did u use the current cord and just cut it out? Please explain step by step of what you got and how did u go ahead and installed it?
Thanks.
Adil.
May 29th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Thanks. I wish this was a permanent feature on laptops..i.e. all mechanically weak spots should be placed outside.