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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January 13th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Larry,
In your laptop the power jack is attached to the motherboard through power cables. On one end cables are soldered to the power jack, on the other end they are soldered to the motherboard. From your description it’s not very clear what kind or problem you are experiencing with the laptop. You said:
If the power jack moves inside the case when you moving the laptop then you’ll have to take a closer look at the place where the power jack makes contact with the laptop case. It’s possible that the power jack or laptop case is broken.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:49 am
btw my laptop is Toshiba Sat. A85 S107 so it has that little cord thing going from it to the mb.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:40 am
nvm lol i missed a screw. uggh took forever for me to realize.
So now I’m at the DC jack. FOr me the jack itself worked fine when connected. Its just that the thing won’t stay still because the case is moving around. Do I need to do a sodering job on the motherboard in this case? Or can I just glue it back into place?
January 13th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Hey. Im trying to get to the dc port but the guitar trick thing doesnt seem to be working for me. The case won’t seem to come off. Can any one give me some advice on how to do this?
January 12th, 2008 at 4:21 am
I just repaired a Gateway MX3228 laptops’ power jack after seeing this write up. I bought a new jack and soldered it to the board but if it comes loose, I will do the wire trick. But it was this article that got me to find the replacement jack, find my laptop’s disassembly manual online (free) and do the work myself saving lots of $$.
Also, after seeing the jack I needed for rip off prices of over $30, I found a great site and got the jack for $5.99 with $3 shipping – so that was good.
Thanks for this write up, it’s good to see sites like this .
January 9th, 2008 at 9:21 am
cj2600,
Thanks for the advise. I will check the AC adapter and then power jack tonight. Hope it’s not MB problem.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Zack,
Check the AC adapter first, make sure it outputs correct voltage.
It’s possible that the AC adapter died while the laptop was still running. The laptop worked for a while on the battery power and then shut off when the battery discharged.
A problem with the AC adapter would explain why you cannot see any LED lights when you plug it in.
If the AC adapter is OK but the laptop appear to be dead, it’s either a problem with the power jack or motherboard.
The power jack in this model is attached to a power cable and this cable simply plugs into the motherboard, you don’t have to resolder the power jack, but you still have to disassemble your laptop in order to access the power jack cable. I’ve noticed that power jacks on this model are not durable, so it could be your problem. For some reason one of the cables often breaks off of the power jack lead, apparently the solder joint is not durable enough.
If the power jack is OK, then you have a problem with the motherboard.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
My Toshiba Satellite A105-S2001 Laptop shut off itself dead without any Led on. Any suggestion on what could be wrong ?Do you think it’s DC Jack issue ?
January 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I removed the DC Power Socket from my Toshiba Satellite A30 Laptop and would like to replace it with a Panel-Mount 2.5mm DC Socket. There are three terminals on this socket; can anyone tell where the three terminals connect to?. Obviously two are the positive and negative terminals. As the socket connects to the laptop frame I think it would be more stable.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I just cured my A75-S2901 of the power jack blues. In my case, the positive lead of the jack was never properly soldered to the board, and I touched-up the negative solder pads while I was at it. Now, the thing charges up nicely, uses mains power like it should, and all is right once more.
What I saw looked to be a total idiot job, assuming the jack may have been replaced once before, but I can’t be sure.
Should this fix turn out to be short-lived, I have the new jack just in case. However, re-flowing the solder did more to help than not. Make certain, when you do your soldering job, to get good flow INTO the positive lead’s hole, because it goes thru the board.