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 22nd, 2010 at 8:54 am
Hello,
I have a LG LS70 Express that I got, and I have the DC power plug in problem that seems common to all. My question is has anyone worked on a LG Laptop? I paid a ridiculous price to fix it once, the fix did not last 90 days. Also has anyone changed out the 600x Ati card, the laptop is old but it still fills my needs, but a little tune up never hurts. Thank you for your help
January 20th, 2010 at 8:14 am
I saw that in the drawing you soldered everything, my question is : Did you include the point close to the hole of the positive terminal?
thank you for sharing your experiencie
January 8th, 2010 at 3:23 am
please note that I could not be able to check my Toshiba a75 laptop battery on load approximately around 1 or a/2 amp e.g I just checked voltage
January 8th, 2010 at 12:25 am
I tested battery by putting in Laptop and checked by meter on the soldering points over the mother board.
January 7th, 2010 at 11:20 am
mystirious,
Sounds like a bad battery to me. How did you test the battery? Are you sure it’s OK?
January 7th, 2010 at 11:08 am
I have tried more than 15 times re soldering dc jack of my toshiba a75 but not its giving me new problem like it worked on when AC connected but when I plug out AC it does not go on battery I checked and found battery is ok.
In windows it shows 100% battery sometime goes on battery for just 1 second and than dead suddenly what should I do now my laptop is still opened
January 5th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Jeff,
Do you use memory in the external slot? If so, remove the external memory module and test the laptop only with onboard memory.
If still nothing, it sounds like the motherboard went bad.
January 5th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
B Harris,
Are you asking about a Satellite A70/A75?
You can see that on the first picture.
Lower two pins are connected to the “-” wire. And the top one to “+” wire.
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Please tell me how the new external two wire cable is wired to replace the three points of the three pin DC jack ? How does two equal three ? Which two pins are wired together ?
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:34 am
I’ve resoldered the power jack a lot and did an external jack on A75 and it was working fine for months. Then it started overheating while playing old games and the power connectivity would start to be a bit on and off. So I figured the heat must have loosened up the soldering I did on the internal wires for my jack.
After popping it open like always and resoldering the connection the power would still flicker but would work if held in a certain way. The big problem was that the monitor wouldn’t even turn on, the dvd won’t spin and the fans only go for like 3 seconds. So I popped everything opened about 7 times after that, tried external monitors (nothing happens), cleaned out the fans, and reseated the memory, wifi card, harddrive. When I checked on the CPU it was actually stuck onto the heat sink. The CPU lock was still on too. I then put the CPU back in it proper place, locked it, (reseated it like 5 times now) and still the same problem.
So basically it’ll turn on (only with AC and battery connected) and won’t boot or anything. Front 3 LEDs are good, fan turns on full for 3 seconds, but no load sounds or monitor or external monitor. I’ve done this with just the motherboard hooked up to an external monitor, battery and AC completely without the case. Nothing happens. It basically was doing this before I even touched the CPU and it was booting fine before when I first decided to pop it open. The original problem was the power connection but now what’s the problem?