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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July 18th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Thanks for this article, I have yet to do this, but I will be by the end of the week. I’ve soldered the box back onto the motherboard about 5 times now, and each time it gives out sooner and sooner, it’s a real pain. This looks like it’ll do the trick though.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:08 am
i Soldered the wires and tied it on the thing and put it back 2gethor… i hope it works cause i dont wanna take the “headache” apart again
July 11th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Gary Tremblay,
Make sure the cooling fans are plugged into the system board. It is possible that the laptop locks up because one of the fans (or both fans) are not plugged in and the laptop overheats. Both fans should start as soon as you turn on the laptop. You can check fans through the air intakes on the bottom. Check if both fans start spinning as soon as you turn on the laptop. If they don’t, check if the fans are plugged in.
July 9th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Hi again and thanks very much for your help. Further to my comments (215), I wasn’t sure if I had touched the cpu when I took the laptop apart but I took it apart again and pushed and wiggled everything and now it works just fine. The only problem I have now is that it keeps locking up on me after about 5 minutes of operation.
July 8th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Gary Tremblay,
Do you have an external memory module? Make sure it’s installed properly. Reseat the memory.
Did you remove the CPU during disassembly? Make sure the CPU is seated properly and is LOCKED inside the socket on the motherboard.
July 8th, 2007 at 11:50 am
I have a Toshiba Satellite A70 and just repaired the ac adaptor plug in. It seems to work ok but the computer will not boot up and all I get is a black screen. The blue light is on but no indication that the processor is working. Any hint as to what I shoul do??
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Andy,
After the modification you don’t have to assemble everything back in order to test the laptop. All you need is the motherboard installed into the case. If you done everything correctly (and there is nothing wrong with the motherboard), the battery should start charging when you plug the AC adapter.
Try starting the system without the battery installed. The cooling fan should start as soon as you press the power button.
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
OK, I’ve just got an external DC jack soldered to the motherboard via a wire which locates the jack outside the case. I really don’t want to put the whole thing back together again to find out whether it works so I just put the battery back in and plugged in the power lead to see if it would begin to charge. The answer was no, it didn’t begin to charge. Could anyone tell me what stage in the dismantling process I need to be at to be able to test whether my modifications have worked. The laptop will run off the battery at the moment in its dismantled state but the battery wont charge through my dc jack extension. Does this mean it hasn’t worked. I get no lights or anything and no whirring, etc.
July 1st, 2007 at 7:35 am
Hello milkman, The wires used were standard 24 SWG stranded wires bought from Radioshack. I suppose you will not find it in computer stores.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
My gosh. A whole howto on soldering two wires. I’m so glad I found this on the internet!