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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March 10th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
kuntal,
How did they fix the static issue? Do you know if they replaced the top cover?
March 10th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Hi,
I followed one of the suggestions in this group and replaced the DC jack with one that could screw to the back of the case using the same hole. However when I went to screw everything down the new nut was stopping the motherboard from coming down. Being a logger I sawed off a slice of the motherboard and then it seated. Things worked fine for a month and then I started gettig lots of blue screens. Recently I re-botted the blue several times and it then said no operating system found. I tried to use the original cd from Toshiba to restart and it said that it was not the right one. Any suggestions and do you think it goes back to my motherboard surgery or just another crappy A70?
March 10th, 2007 at 5:37 am
Took your advice. Found local Toshiba authorized dealer. Took my 2+ yr old m35x-s109 with chronic power jack problems. Replaced system board no questions asked and despite my previously opening up and resoldering jack. Had it back in less than a week. They say new board has more secure/stronger attachment of jack. Works great (so far!!) Thank You !!!
March 9th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Great info. I wish I found it before I tried opening this sucker up. I managed to avoid any damage and will be using the same short cut you mentioned. It is a design flaw on the satellite a70/a75 series and I can see the outside connection of the jack is buggered up and not making the connection. I plan on sticking a jack outside and maybe even glueing it sideways over the old power jack location.
Thanks for stopping me from ordering a new jack from Toshiba, I don’t have the patience for it.
March 7th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I too have a A75-S209 laptop. Had the motherboard and fans replaced. The laptop does not overheat but it locks up…. They repared the static issue and still my laptop is locking.
It happens when either my laptop is idle or when I am typing something in WORD. When it hangs, I have to shut it down and reboot it.
Anyone knows the reason for it?
I did change my OS from Windows XP HOME to WINDOWS XP PRO SP2 but I do not thing that it might affect locking. I updated the drivers to tje latest ones also.
Please help as this is driving me nuts…
Kuntal
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Hope,
The power jack in this model is not located on the system board. It’s attached to the motherboard via a harness as you can see on the step 15 in this disassembly guide. If there is something wrong with the power jack, you’ll have to replace the DC-IN harness.
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:08 am
Mandy Humphrey,
For most Dell laptops you can find step-by-step disassembly instruction in the laptop service manual.
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
I have a Toshiba satellite A85-S107 its got similar problem to this A75. Any comments please on to how to replace the DC jack on A85 ?
thanks
March 1st, 2007 at 7:54 pm
#170 Mandy Humphrey
I went to Dell’s support website-clicked on Manuals on the left and then entered model and model no. Then clicked on English and then Service manual. It gave pictures with the screw placements.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:45 pm
#169Debbie
If you check on Toshiba’s website about the class action lawsuit you will see that everyone else has the same problem. Must submit claim by March 9th.