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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November 13th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I see the repair and the pictures are clear but do I need to remove the motherboard to do this repair, and what screws do I remove to take the motherboard out.
October 30th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
thank you for all the good information I found on this site. Have a Thshiba A75 s209 with power jack problem. After reading info here I decided to open it up. I have odered new jack from EBAY.
On the old Jack I re soldered the center post and one other post.
Put the laptop back and plug the power cord. No action so I disassembled totally and tried to measure continuiety at the Jack.
I get contiuity signal between the center post and the body without any thing plugged in. Should there be continuiety??. or is it since the jack is part of the circuit on MB there would be continuity.
Appriciate any feed back if someone has tried to measure with a meter.
I have a feeling there is a short circuit between the post and the body.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Hi, thanks for these instructions. My friend gave me her dead Gateway solo 9550 laptop. The DC jack was serviced before for $175, and of course, it came loose soon after. It turned out it was a horrible hack job that wound up breaking the joint again and melted the DC jack casing.
I followed your directions. However I did not remove the motherboard. The dc jack for this laptop is 3 prong. I soldered the + and – terminals. I also soldered in the 3rd wire. Tested everything with a multimeter. I tied a knot in the case at the opening. Used a lot of electrical tape. It works perfectly beautiful now.
laptop- free
electrical solder- $3.00
new dc jack- $6.00
beer- $1.34
salvaged 22g wires- free
burned finger- free
burned carpet- free
time- 2 hrs out of a Monday night
October 25th, 2007 at 6:54 am
hello, i have a m35x and have ran the wires outside the case. i used what i believe to be 18 gage speaker wire. i can put the battery in and receive no power. i can plug in the ac adpater and still not receive any power. my ac adapter is beeping. i also know i have shorted it out several times due to the small streams of smoke i have saw. i will be out of town until monday so i plan on checking back then. i do have a multimeter but have no clue how to use it. i am also pretty new to soldering. i know i have placed the wires in the correct spots (positive to postive, negative to negative). the problem i kept running into was with my positive wire on the board. i couldnt seem to get it connected and stay connected. i used solder with flux in it. my negative wire seems to have stayed connected very well and i have got all three spots on the board connected. my original attempt was to resolder the plug in adapter to the board and it did work then but i have to lift up on the cord to make it work. then the next morning i saw smoke and no power and decided to take it off and try to take the adapter outside the case. my current setup: negative- i have all three spots on the board connected and soldered with a good solid connection (in my opinion) on the bottom of the board i just have three little bits of solder just over the holes these are not connected, positive- part of the green on the motherboard has actually peeled up around the whole, i have a small peice of speaker wire inside the hole on the motherboard and i have soldered it on both sides of the board. the bottom of the case is actually extremly close to the bottom of the board and have very little room to solder anything that is the least bit tall (know this from experience by seeing smoke) without shorting anything out. i am pretty sure that i have a good connection with the adapter itself do to the fact that i have saw sparks inbetween the positve and negative soldered parts on the board. however i can not get anything right now with or with out the batter. another question, does the battery need to be in to power on the laptop. any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance.
October 24th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Sounds like a job for hot melt to me. Take the strain off the electrical connections. I love that stuff!
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Wow, I’ve done exactly that repair — about a year ago. The wire finally gave out. One word though, it is a PIA going through airport security with. For the new repair I’m trying to get something internal for only that reason. Btw I brought my wires out the little hole on the right side just near there, worked great..
oh yeah, damn Toshiba — last time I buy one from them.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:32 am
Anyone know of a way to determine if the motherboard is fried?
M35X-S3112 laptop — 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. Reapplied thermal grease for video and CPU, ensured CPU was locked, results same. No beeps on power up with or without memory. Battery appears to charge.
Fix was attempted by adding a 2nd AC adapter attached via wires soldered to bottom of m-board. Soldering included only bottom as original adapter left in place and resoldered from the bottom. All multi-meter checks indicate both re-soldered old and new AC adapters have proper voltage.
Any ideas/info on other checks would be appreciated as I’d like to resurrect the laptop without having to buy a new motherboard which will eventually have he same power jack problem.
I’ve read & reread posts here to see what may be the missing link, but nothing jumps out as the culprit
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October 18th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
nevermind, i had overlooked the 25 previous pages of comments. The wires are described on the first page. Thanks for the info!
October 18th, 2007 at 11:53 am
One clarification needed. What type of wire was used in attaching the dc power jack outside of the laptop? Wire’s aren’t all the same, are they? I have already replaced one jack on my laptop, and the inner pin seems to be breaking again.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:25 am
Just a note … a large long piece of heat shrink would have made this repair almost look professional. Not that I’m knocking the ingenious resolution to a recurring problem ..