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!
October 2nd, 2006 at 4:37 pm
i have a toshiba A75 laptop and i have the same problem.
i would like to ask if where can i buy a new AC/DC JACK and What kind or what size is the AC jack is? please someone reply?
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:59 am
Long time no post thought i would update everyone. Basically what i have done now is what NP Suber has posted above. Remove the old jack totally and solder in a couple of wires then onto the new jack. I left the old hole in the case intact just moved new jack it a bit to the side. Laptop has been going great. The trick to this is solder on both sides of the motherboard top and bottom. Works a treat now. On a side note since you have it all apart remove the fans and give everything a good clean you will be suprised at the amount of dust that gets in there.
Regards
September 30th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Does anyone have the wiring diagram for Radio Shack part 274-1582 (referenced in post #57)? I lost the packaging with the diagram.
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
I think I may have an improvement on the extremely helpful suggestions on this site. I took the suggestion of earlier commentors to look at Radio Shack for parts, but I ended up using 274-1582. That one has a couple of advantages: it has a slightly smaller outer diameter, and it mounts from the inside of the case with the nut going on the outside. The smaller diameter means it can fit where the old jack was, and since it mounts from the interior, if you ever want to pull the motherboard in the future, you won’t have to desolder the jack.
First, disassemble the laptop per the instructions on this site. Then desolder the jack from the motherboard. Next, enlarge the hole in the case, to fit the new jack, using a 5/16 drill bit. The new jack has a switching feature that we don’t need, but you will have to test the voltage coming off the back to get the right post for the negative wire. Once the wires have been soldered to the jack, make sure to insulate everything. I used heatshrink from Radio Shack, 278-1627. That is a pack of multiple sizes. It has small ones that will fit the wires/posts, as well as a big one that will fit over the whole assembly. I left only the threads exposed. Now fit it into the enlarged hole and thread on the nut. Solder it to the motherboard (I went from the bottom up, and tusked the extra wire underneath the motherboard). Finally, reassemble the laptop, and you should be in business. The advantage to this method is you don’t have to hav the connection dangling out of the case, but it also isn’t physically mounted to the motherboard, so no stress on the solder points.
September 14th, 2006 at 6:12 am
Hi Chris & Joe, Why don’t to try to relocate the DC jack outside the laptop? I reached this stage after my futile attempts to just resolder the DC jack, even Toshiba service centre failed to give a permanent solution. Toshiba service centre replaced my old DC jack with a new one and the laptop worked fine for about 2 months and it developed problem again. That was the time I decided to take out the DC jack. With the DC in, I faced the same problems as you all faced, like loose contact, battery not charging while PC is ON etc. Its been about 5 months+ since I did this (DC jack out stuff) and I am getting good results, not a time I faced any problem there after. Some of the people who read the messages in this forum did mail me saying that they too had great success.
Good luck to you all.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Hi, I have just doen the same to my Tecra 8000, using the original power socket. I had to solder the -ve wire to two fo the posts on the socket (it would not work with just one). Now it works great, However I have discovered the battery is either dead, not charging or not switching over to battery power (the latter is a problem I have with my Toshiba 490CDXT as the battery will work in my 400CDT)
Thanks for you great advice
September 8th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Albert,
DC jack workaround should be the same for both models A75 and M35X, they both use the same type of the power jack.
September 8th, 2006 at 9:41 am
Ok last night I took it apart yet again. I had my buddy solder from the center pin on the ac plug to the other end of the fuse. That didn’t make a difference. So then I downloaded toshiba power management software and that didn’t seem to make a difference. But, I woke up this morning and my battery is fully charged and my computer is running on ac power. I’m afraid to turn it off now! Dont know if maybe the aftermarket ac adapter I have is not powerful enough to charge the battery and run the laptop at the same time or what….. Actually that wouldn’t matter cause it wouldn’t run with the battery out either last night so who knows. It must have been little elves in my sleep.
September 8th, 2006 at 4:36 am
Hi Chris looks like i am stuck at the same point as you. I have dismantled my A75 twice and resoldered the connector on both occasions. Second time around i soldered the 3 pins together just incase. All was well till this evening. If i shut down the laptop the battery will charge fully. If i turn it on sometimes it will power via the adapter or the battery but not always. I might try flashing the bios on a full charge and see if that helps fingers crossed. Will let you know what my results are once i have tried it.
Regards
September 7th, 2006 at 8:50 am
I have the same problem, my A75 will run off battery power but not AC. The battery will charge when the computer is powered down but not while it is on. I can go to the F2 boot option page and it will run without the battery in but as soon as windows starts it goes to battery power. Somewhere I read that it could be a bios problem but I am afraid to flash cause it wont run on ac and I dont want the battery to die in the middle. I have resoldered the power plug twice now and the first time it worked great but this time it wont run on ac?????????????????