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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December 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
INCREDIBLE!!
I changed the motherboard and I still have the problem, my next step will be change the charger.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Hi everyone,
I had the same problem that Joe and Chris (#51 and #53), my laptop only sometimes charged the battery when was turned on and always when was turned off. I started re-welding the power jack and then changing the battery and the charger…nothing improved. With time, the laptop was working worse, and finally only charged when was turned off. Looking for solutions I found this site and I follow the suggestinons on #57 but nothing changed. Now I´m buying a new motherboard, I gave up looking for solutions, I already did everything I could.
December 9th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Ugh!
Ok I almost had it. Had the jack outside then I got a short. And it was where the casing touches. Anyway. How do you fix a short? Do I just cut the end of the wires where it is burnt or do I need to start with fresh wires? I tried cutting the end of the positive end and soldering again but that didn’t work. There is not power connection at all now. ahhhh!
November 25th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Great thanks for tip. Did it and no more pulling on dc cord.
November 15th, 2008 at 12:12 am
In response to
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.
I have a Toshiba A75 and tried the part from radio shack. I used a soldering iron to gently melt the plastic casing because the original hole was a tad small for the new jack. I soldered wire to the motherboard and ran the other ends to the jack following the instructions of the original poster. The only problem for me was that I mounted the jack onto the case and THEN soldered the wires from the motherboard. I didn’t want the external wires. Doing so does not leave enough room for the motherboard to sit correctly. There is now a very small gap on the back corner of the laptop case. Lesson to others; solve the problem before you solder because you will be too lazy to go back and fix it.
The connection itself works great though. I don’t see this problem occurring again since the wires will provide room for movement. I’m just glad I was able to preform open heart surgery on my laptop. Thanks to all who posted and this website!
November 13th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Laptop manufacturers have known about these DC inputs since the nineties (probably before that as well).
I know since I worked on them.
Best to look into laptops with the input attached with a wire connector instead of soldered to the board. Many high end laptops honor this method. It’s not wholly by choice though.
Most of the time it’s because they can’t accommodate a rear input due to interference with docking stations, port replicators, etc.
If the input is on the side of the laptop it’s going to be connected with a wire to the board. If it’s in the back, it’s on-die as they say- affixed to the mainboard.
The side inputs are cleverly built to collapse and push inside the laptop, but at least you can just get a new one and plug it in by only removing the palmrest. Far superior in my opinion but not perfect. Best of two evils I imagine.
You think millions of dollars in development and thousands of engineers don’t know this is a crappy idea?
The laptops usually fail after warranty so that leaves millions of people hungry for new laptops- regardless of their brand loyalty.
When is anyone going to wake up and demand real quality and not more hype and disposable shiny garbage.
This is a cancer that is consuming ALL industries.
Your better off hanging onto your old reliable than blowing cash on the next core duo super disco ball burner.
I’m still handing out nearly ten year old laptops that outlast the hard drives. Try that will the new junk. Craigslist and ebay are full of scrapped laptops and sob story’s about their struggle to convince the service department in India to honor their own warranties.
GOD SAVE US ALL!
October 29th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Cameron Myers,
I don’t think that you can fix it yourself because the damage is inside the case. Is it a Toshiba laptop? I’ve seen a few newer Toshiba laptops with a very weak power jack and it breaks a lot. I’ve replaced a few jack like that myself. If the laptop is less than one year old you can try taking it to the authorized repair center. There is a chance they fix it under warranty.
October 29th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Well, i was sitting on a chair working on my laptop, my legs were crossed on the chair and the ac adapter cord was under my knee. when i moved to put my knee down, i accidentally caught the cord with my knee and ripped the plug out of the computer at a sideways angle. I heard something like plastic snapping. Now, when i plug my Laptop into the cord, the cord freely moves around inside the laptop as if there is nothing to support it on the inside. It still charges and i don’t think anything technical happened, but something defiantly snapped, and now its really hard to keep the plug into the laptop because it has nothing to hold it in place. this only happened 30 minutes ago and i’m like freaking out, due that i’m only 14 and my parents bought me this laptop and if i break it i owe them a new one!!! so if i don’t get it figured out… i’m dead.
please!!! help me out! send the solution to my email at marinemaniac981@aim.com i’m freaking out here so please help another human being out!!!
October 11th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I did the similar thing on a toshiba A75-S2131, and it works then it stops workign agin and the charger makes a beeping sound why might this be???
October 6th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I did th exact same as alex # 323 and I still can’t get it to operate via battery. it works from either jack when plugged in and never fails. The only problem I still have is the battery not being recognized. I think I soldered it to all points exposed on the top too? so wtf else could possibly be done to resolve this.