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.
If you find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
August 17th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Hey I just want to say, I’m having the same problem and the Fujitsu guy said i’d need to pay AU$500-2000 on top of a AU$100 labour fee!!! Gonna try and do this myself now. tho it’s a little different for me, coz i can already see that the male black plastic thing has snapped and come off the power jack!!! might have to buy a new one!!!
August 8th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Today I fixed my Toshiba laptop’s power jack problem by following the discussions in this thread. I am happy that the computer is working again and want to say thanks to the site for the information and to Tony for his good idea.
When I took apart the laptop I found the jack’s pin was already broken and the jack fell off the board when the board was lifted. I went to Radio Shack and bought a 40w iron, solder, 18G wires, a multimeter, a # 274-1563 jack, and electric tape. The rest just went as what the instruction showed.
I ended up not using the Radio Shack jack. I soldered the wires to the broken jack and it worked fine. The Radio Shack jack does work for the plug, but the old jack is better suited for the pigtail.
The multimeter proved to be useful as I used it to test the jacks and the soldered connections.
BTW, I also cleaned the heatsink after dismantling the laptop. I was amazed how much dust it got there. If you visit the other thread on this site about the overheating problem, it is just like what the picture there shows!
August 7th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Paige,You will need a multimeter/voltmeter to dtermine the polarity of the terminals. When connected to power measure the DC voltage at the points using the multimeter probe. If the reading shows a positve value then the point under the red probe is +ve and point under the black probe is the -ve terminal. If the reading in the multimeter shows a negative value the polarity is reverse, that is point under red probe is -ve and that of black is +ve. In many cases it can be generalized that the inner portion or ring of the DC plug from the AC adaptor is +ve and outer is -ve, similarly with the DC socket, the inner point is +ve and outer is -ve. This does not hold true for all the systems hence you will need to confirm the same with a multimeter. Also you will find a small diagram on the AC adaptor indicating which side is +ve and which one is -ve. Once that is determined you may then determine the polarity of the DCd socket it connects to. This information would further help in determining the polarity of the soldering points on the mother board. Good Luck !
August 6th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
I have a Pavilion zt1135, my power jack was broke pretty much in two and I bought another one. I’m a confused to which points are positive and negative on the motherboard and the same on the dc jack. I dont think mine is like the one in the pic above. Can someone please help me?? Thanks is advance!
August 3rd, 2006 at 11:17 pm
[...] If you have never soldered before, then it’s not a good idea to get your first experience on a still working system board. I would recommend finding a repair shop or a local computer geek who can help you replace the jack. It’s shouldn’t be very expensive because you’ve already removed the system board. [...]
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:42 am
Update
———————————————————————
The laptop will not run from DC power after it POSTS. It will drop the DC power and pull from the battery; however, it will charge the battery while the laptop is turned off.
The front panel LEDs inidcate that the DC power cable is plugged in, but the BIOS seems to choose NOT to use the DC power.
I will continue to troubleshoot the issue. I plan on flashing the BIOS. I need to fool the hardware into pulling juice from the DC plug. More updates to come.
Kindest Regards,
Jon
August 1st, 2006 at 6:18 pm
UPDATE
————————
For some stupid reason, you have to have the battery in the laptop.. I don’t understand..
So far everything is working…
I recommened soldering on the a new DC power plug, i’ll check this post later if anyone is interested in my experience.
It reassmbled clean and i don’t have a crazy cable out the back of my laptop..
August 1st, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Well, I purchased a new power plug from ebay, desoldered the old one from the laptop and soldered the new on onto the laptop mobo.
Note: You need a 40watt iron to remove the factory solder and desoldering braid.
The system gets powers and turns on; however, when it attempts to boot from a device (hdd, cdrom) it immediately powers down.
i can access the BIOS settings, and it will stay on
I can also remove all bootable devices, other thank the LAN, and it will continuously attempt to boot from LAN and not power down.
I am seriously confused… I had a similar problem with a new build on a desktop machine, but I just cleared the CMOS. Unfortunatly there is no jumper to clear the CMOS and the CMOS battery is very finely soldered to the board. I don’t want to detatch it.
Any ideas??
Thanks,
Jon
August 1st, 2006 at 5:30 am
i have the toshiba satellite A75-S231 model
i am facing the same problem what others facing
how to remove the dc jack frm the board and how to replace the with new one
where i have to buy that
and how to remove frm the board
can u explain in detail so that i can fix the problem of mine
i am new to this type of issue and i managed to remove the complete laptop assumble but i am not able to remove the dc jack
i am waiting for ur reply
b’cos my laptop kept one
with regards,
sathya
July 25th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Marcus, I doubt if you got the terminals interchaged. Make sure that the +ve terminal is indeed connecting the the +ve terminal of the AC adaptor plug (inner ring) and the -ve terminal is connecting to the -ve terminal of the AC adaptor plug. Also make sure that there are no short circuit, it may have happened while the solder was applied. Use a multimeter to ensure the above mentioned points. Since your laptop works fine with the old connection, it is most probably due to terminal interchange (most likely) or short circuit in the new connection.