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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December 31st, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Tony, Hammad Hassan,
From my knowledge, originally the white cable goes to the main connector and the black one to the auxiliary, but it shouldn’t really matter. Both ways should work just fine because both wireless antennas are about the same as you can see on the step 8 here.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
My A75 S209 had the same problem but bafter going back to Toshiba it got fixed
But now the problem is different, The cursor just hangs up at times when u are working
December 29th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Hello Hammad Hassan, For your reference I have uploaded the photograph of the WiFi wires connection. The white wire goes to AUX and black one goes to Main. Looking at the image you should be able to identify. Here is the image: http://www.freeimagehosting.ne.....09382a.jpg
December 28th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
I had DC jack problem also. External wire was not an option for me. What i did was to desolder the dc jack. Positive terminal of pin was broken so all i did was to solder the back of positive terminal with flexable wire so what ever happens there is no stress on board solder. I think this is the best solution. Please comment. Also can someboday help me with wireless modem pinouts.
December 27th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Can you please tell me how to put back black and white wires of wireless card in this laptop. One is AUX and Other is Main. which one goes where ? Thank you.
December 27th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
I am so glad I ran across this site. My dc adapter was losing its connection to the board and I was sick of re-soldering it. The external dc adapter is working perfectly.
Thanks !!
December 25th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Hey guys just thought i would add to the question about the metal jacket on the ac inlet.” its fine dont mess with it” the 1 all by itself is the positive all you need to know!. First of all you all dont have to replace or attach anything , unless something is broken ie: the pin. I would sudjest soldering on either side of the board to assure no play stress is applied to the positive pin. If you only solder the top the pin will still have a week spot, this would be under the board. The pin will eventually be able to move wherever. The pin is still connected so it will provide minimum power required for charging.
These are tell tale signs that it can be repaired by solder the bottom.Or have wires hanging from your laptop!! get a vacuum cord so i comes back. :p
December 24th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Richard,
Remove the keyboard and check if the touchpad cable is seated properly, all the way down the connector on the motherboard. Reseat the cable and make sure to lock the connector. Probably that’s your problem.
BTW before going inside try to enable the touchpad by pressing Fn+F9 key combination. May be the tochpad is just disabled.
December 24th, 2006 at 5:04 am
Mate all i can say is that ur a legend.
I am a technician by trade and found ur instructions very simple and effective. Though the only change I made was using an in-line DC jack socket instead, just so if the insulation broke down, you would have no exposed wires. Good luck with all the other A70 owners out there, now its time for me to fix the DVD drive, yet another Toshiba screw up!!!
December 21st, 2006 at 9:13 am
Thanks for the instruction on the power jack repair. I paid $280 to have it fixed once but it failed again. Just when I was going to toss the laptop, I found your site. I followed your instructions and was happily able to get the power jack repaired, using the pigtail approach. My only problem was when I put it all back together, the touchpad doesn’t work. I can plug in an external usb mouse and it works fine. Any suggestions for fixing the touchpad?