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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January 20th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Hello Mike, I had gone through your exact problem. My first solution was not to dangle a wirte outside. I had sent the laptop to Toshiba service centre and they resolddred it. It worked fine for few weeks/months. I was gettting so frustrated by this that I had to come up with the “out of the box” solution. I know the dangling wire does not look good at all, but this solution works great. Due to the bad design the possiblility of breaking the conneciton if the DC jack if directly on the motherboard is very high. Hence I suggest you take the connection out. To answer your question, this is exactly what I did, soldered the wires directly from the motherboard.
Good Luck.
Tony.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
The pathetic thing is i just sent that message and already i have to resolder my board again. I just looked down and saw the light go out. It means taking all the screws out all over , i wanna sell it, or have a wire hang out of it. I might consider not attaching the ac inlet to the mother board. I will take my old inlet and mount a wire from the pin directly to the positive on the motherboard. Im just wondering if i should do this? or i could use a different type of solder that is harder. This is gonna be funn!!
January 18th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Why would any1 want a cord hanging from the laptop? Just be smart and solder it on the top and bottom of the board. This worked well with the a70 jack. At first i was just loosening screws and sticking a hot butter knife in there to heat the solder joint , renewing the connection!. This has to be done on both sides or the cord will start to wiggle within the first week. Also any1 doing it to the Toshiba 2800 power cord fix i used a cannon printer parts to fix the broken power plug. This part would work in any laptop fix. The good thing is it has wires hanging from it so dont attach the part to the motherboard anymore!
January 18th, 2007 at 5:44 am
LB,
Unfortunately mine is an A65, so while it apparently suffers the same malady as the other models it’s not covered.
Thanks,
David
January 18th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Hi Tony, Thanks for the response. I may just leave the old one in place then. That seems much easier.
David
January 18th, 2007 at 12:01 am
LB,
If you bought your Satellite A75 notebook in the United States, I think you have a chance to fix it for free. Toshiba issued a 12 months warranty extension for Satellite M30X, M35X, A70 and A75. Check out comments 7 and 8 in this post.
January 17th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Hello David,
Well, if you are implementing the external DC jack fix, you may let the broken jack be there in its place. It will do no harm. But if you insist on removing it, you will have to desolder it using a soldering iron and desoldring pump. The basic technique being to remove all the solder holding the DC jack to the motherboard and then pull it out. And regarding the WiFi antenna cable, it ok, its just a push-in connector and you just need to push the connector back into position.
Regards,
Tony Sakariya
January 17th, 2007 at 7:44 am
[...] Then I tried to clean the contacts on the board with an eraser to remove any oxidation on the copper, stuck the jack back in its holes and soldered it back on. So far I haven’t had any problems, we’ll see if it last this time. If it breaks again (knock on wood), I’m definitely trying the external power jack workaround. [...]
January 16th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Thank yoiu for the information. I have the same problem with my Toshiba laptop.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I have the same DC jack problem on my toshiba laptop. I have disassembled the unit but don’t know how to get the old DC jack off of the motherboard. Can anyone offer some help? Also, while taking the thing apart i accidentally pulled one of the wifi wires off of the connector. That looks like it just pushes in to the connector though..
Thanks,
David