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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September 19th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
NWdev,
This problem could be related to a faulty memory module.
Try starting the laptop without any memory. When you start a Satellite M35X without memory, it beeps. Does your laptop beep when you have no memory installed? Make sure that speakers are connected. If the laptop will not beep without memory, you might have a motherboard related problem.
Did you remove the CPU during the disassembly process. If you did, make sure the CPU is seated properly and it’s locked inside the socket on the motherboard.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Alice,
Try this. Remove the battery, unplug the AC adapter, press on the power button and keep it down for a few seconds. Now plug the AC adapter (without battery installed) and try to turn it on.
Another thing to try is reseating the memory module/modules. Just remove the memory from the slot and install it back. It’s possible that memory is not making a good connection with the slot on the motherboard. Try replacing the memory module with a known good one.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Forgot to mention, the battery appears to be charging based on the front lights when the AC plug is put into either the old or new jack…
Course not sure that matters if the motherboard is toast.
(
September 19th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Well, got the motherboard removed — it was hung up on the 1394 connector.
Soldered the wires onto the bottom of the board to the + and – for the original jack.
Put it back together the reverse of disassembly (except left the secure strip off for the time being).
Unfortunately it appears the board has failed — no boot when powered up w/ or w/o AC power. Reseated memory, still same. Powers up, fan runs, blue light on the power, then fan shuts off. Power light remains on until I remove AC and battery.
I’ll be picking up some thermal grease for re-greasing just in case, but its not on long enough to heat anything I wouldn’t think — less than about 3 seconds.
Any ideas of other things to try?
September 19th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Anyone have success in removing the motherboard from an M35X-S3112?
I’d like to remove the motherboard to solder on the bottom of the board, but can’t get it loose from the case bottom.
Followed the guide (thanks!), and it seems to be held fast in 2 areas — on the side toward the PCMCIA, 1394, and USB slot (right side of the laptop) and also near the CPU, DC jack, serial port, an parallel port (rear of the laptop).
I hestitate to force things too much since I don’t want to create another problem (aside from the DC jack) by losening up soldered points to these other IO connectors.
Guess if I can’t get the board out I’ll add the wires and the new jack by soldering to the existing jack solder points that I can reach… Hopefully that will do?
Any tips/hints appreciated. Thanks!
September 19th, 2007 at 6:34 am
I have a toshiba satellite M45. I push the power button and it lights up, but it makes no sound. We had a storm this morning, computer was plugged in, everthing else plugged in there still works. Pushed power button at one time and it made sound like it was running, but it neve went ahead and powered up. Any suggestions?
September 19th, 2007 at 3:44 am
I was wondering if their is any way to just bypass the jack all together and just hardwire the power supply directly? I have no reason why I would need to disconnect it.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
hello i succesfully put an outside adapter for my laptop
and still have flashing lights the power will not stay on
and don’t have money to send to shop what could be the
problem now can anyone help ??????
September 14th, 2007 at 1:45 am
Hello- I own the Satellite A85-S107 and reading the blog I seems to have the same issue.When plugging the power in the computer the light is flickering and the computer not charging. Does it look to be the same issue?
September 13th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Kristianne,
You can find disassembly guide for many different Toshiba models at http://www.irisvista.com
Taking apart Satellite 2435 will not be much different then taking apart any other Toshiba laptop. Read through a few different guides and you’ll get the idea hot to get to the motherboard and power jack.