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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August 23rd, 2006 at 7:32 am
im not that adept at reading the meter but we did hook it up to the meter and it looked like it was working (it was giving similar readings as the AC adapter on my work laptop). i guess thats the only other thing it could be though unless something went out on the system board (does that sound likely if everything works fine with battery power?) how would i check to make sure the AC adapter is really working? is there a certain reading it should be giving? thanks
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Mike,
Have you tested the AC adapter itself? May be the power plug on the adapter is bad?
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:19 pm
I have had the power problem for about a year on my A75and have been going through all kinds of wiggling and ducttaping in certain positions to get it to work (and trying not to bump it). It finally quit all together the other day and i found this fix. i went through the whole process and put everything back together and turned it on and it still does nothing. monumentally frustrating! i had my buddy do the soldering and it all appears to be good. i put a meter on it and there is no short between the wires and everything still works with the battery but not even a flicker of light on the power when i hook it up to AC. i even skipped the dc connector and hooked it up directly to the wire harness but nothing. not sure where to go from here… my battery is down to 10% and i cant even charge it. any tips or ideas? TIA
August 21st, 2006 at 5:38 pm
You ‘da man!! You saved me about $500. The repair shop wanted me to buy a completely new system board and pay for labor. I went for the internal fix, but it worked fine. Thank you so much!
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
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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