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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February 1st, 2007 at 3:50 am
hey those screws may have came from a secret screw spot under the cd rom and theres another sneeky spot mabey.
When you take it apart you need to check the cooling area. take the fans out vacuum. Or even just take out the huge build up if you see it. I had more lint than my dryer can produce in 1 day. I bet your having a hell of a time. I did the same bro. I had shut offs for ever, i felt the laptop and it was very hot every time . Try leaving it on with nothing blocking the fan area, make sure it is not on a flat surface because it needs space to breathe now. I vaccuumed mine when this happened, at the car wash. It usually stopped for 3 months at a time. I even had fans that sounded like a truck. The batery light going out when in use/ charging at the same time. Is a result of the cord connection needing matainance. For a while i was calling toshiba too…. Ill do this for any1 if there near guelph ontario canada!!
January 31st, 2007 at 9:48 pm
we have tried several times to fill in the online form.. no go, the form errors out so I investigated. Any one who knows how to code on the web will see what they have done.. – I am including my letter to them.. also called. no forms to join the class todate. I almost want to file a seperate action. this is times 4 ( its in the shop now ) this computer has gone in for the problem described here as well as over heat.. and others.
They have replace the mother board 3 times.. those mama boards got for over 400.00 – this trip will exceed the 1400+ dollars that was paid for the computer.
We still have the original box and this is information from it
that may be useful.
Toshiba A75-S209
P/N: EDW10880012
SN: 1046049300857
SUPPLIER PART NUMBER: PSA70U-09700E
Joe Oliver
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January 31st, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Hello Gary, This really sounds like a heating problem. You may want to try the following. Make sure the heat sinks are all seated proprly and fans are working fine too. You may hold a thread from a fabric to see if the fans are really sucking in air from under and blowing it out through the rear. Also you may want to see if the soldering you did on the area of broken jack is strong. It could be that when the Laptop is powered by the adaptor the soldering points are getting warm (normal) and in the process there is some loose contact developing as the solder becomes soft when it becomes quite hot. All my guesses, Just wanted to give you some ideas. Good Luck !!!
January 31st, 2007 at 9:22 am
Tony:
Thanks for response. It will start to start up without battery in BUT then
conks out at some point.
Seems the AC works for a while, then conks in computer despite still getting
juice. Unplug and wait and plug in again and works for a little while and
then dies. Might even go back on for a while. Building up some
heat/capacitance??? somewhere and then circuit breaks inside somewhere ????
Fan seems to be working but don’t get much chance to get to hear it.
With battery in, not consistently charging despite amber light. That was
true before opening up and is still true. Totally different problem
unrelated to jack?? It will run off battery without conking out.
Ready to open up for third time. I do have a couple of screws extra from
putting back together that I missed reinstalling somewhere. Would that
matter?
Thanks,
Gary Champlin
January 29th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Hello Carson and Kin, Looks like you both have the same problem. When you say that the screen is blank, does it mean that evn the backlight is not present? To see if backlight it present, just tun on your laptop in a darm room and see if it shows some light. If not then the most likely proble is loose connection. Just make sure that the connector is tight. You may want to unplug the connector and verify if any pins are bent and that the connectors are going in the right way. Good Luck !
January 29th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Hello Gary, Here are few things you can try. Rmove the battery and switch on the Laptop powered by the adaptor. See if it boot fine. If it doesn’t boot, then you have a problem with the connection. If it boots fine, then install the battery and then boot thr system, check the battery charginf status from the Windows battery status, it should indicate as charging. If it is shown as charging then shutdown your latop and leave it overnight for the battery to charge fully. Try these and see. Good Luck.
January 29th, 2007 at 5:50 am
I have the same problem as 133. All Toshiba Laptop seems have this similar problem…from PII models. I will try another time…by removing the old jack.
January 28th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Followed instructions for attaching wires and external connector except did not remove old jack. I’ve got power to/from wires outside. New problem. Lights go out after about 10 minutes and battery not charging despite amber light. Short somewhere? On meter I am reading 19.28 volts even after lights go out.
January 25th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I am having the same problem as the person below me. I took apart and cleaned and when I put it back together – the screen stays blank although I know it is plugged in – and it doesn’t make the sounds that it normaly makes when windows starts up- please help!
January 24th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I took my A75 S226 apart (this is the second time) – and this time when i put it back together – the monitor appers not to turn on and stays black, however, when I turn it off – the screen flashes blue for a second before my computer shuts down. This makes me think that the screen is hooked up (i made sure all screen parts were connected) – but that for whatever reason my computer is not booting up.
I had some weird beeps one time- the second time my disc drive started up – the third time it made a few weird noises and then just stopped with the booting up sounds and just sits there. Someone please help!