Topic: Guys i need your input: Laptop

[Steve]

I have Heather's Toshiba A135 here for repair, and im taking it back to FL with me monday. Let me give the back story first. When i was in Florida she had told me her laptop never really charged right, like it would just stop. So she had gone out and got a Targus adapter and it was still doing it. I took a look and as i expected the AC jack was loose and the pin was on its last days.

Well i never got around to it because things just didnt line up. A few weeks ago it broke, and she called me to see what she should do. Knowing her brother i called him up, because hes a smart kid and he is good with anything electronic, motors, etc. I emailed him the breakdown instructions and told him to pickup a male and female plug like what you see on RC car battery packs, or smiliar, and solder one end to the laptop wiring and one end to the AC adapter. He knew exactly what he meant and turns out he did it on his wife's a few months ago. I did this because she doesnt have the money to pay someone to do a replacement.

So fast forward like two weeks heather calls me and tells me that the laptop jack was installed, but it wont work. So her brother was taking it to a "computer guy" at his work. I told her to send me the laptop before it got worse but she told me he already had it. Few days later the computer guy concludes that it needs a new motherboard because the "power board" is fried.

I'm thinking maybe but before she has to finance a new laptop i want a look at it. Her mom overnighted it to me a few days ago.

Now that your caught up, i plugged it in and it did nothing, and i can hear a very faint "tick tick tick" very quickly, near the fan of course. So i decide to break it down and see whats up. Visually i see absolutely no indication that anything is fried. No burn marks, no odd smells, etc. The ticking is in fact coming from the fan.

It's my opinion that the motherboard is recieving power, as the fan is affected, so im not convinced its shot. I'm thinking maybe the jack is wired wrong. Any thoughts before i undo all the lovely heatshrink and wires? I cant see chris wiring it wrong, but im not blind to the idea.

I'll upload some pics in a few when my phone is charged.

[Steve]

my phones fucked up, no pics. The wiring is correct on the laptop side, but the adapter side im honestly not sure wtf is going on. Visualize one solid braid, tick, with a brown and a blue thing wire coming from the center and moved out of the way. Then the red and black wire from the new plug end are connected to the braid in some sort of confused way with a mix of solder.

its fucking confusing. I'm guessing either the +/- are backwards, or they are cross connected. I dunno gotta pick it apart....ugh

[Steve]

ok i took it all apart. trying to get the pics up but i cant.

The power adapter has braiding that wraps around the positive red wire. The red wire is soldered to the red wire on the new plug, and the negative is soldered to that braiding. I assume the braiding is the ground wire. The part confusing me is there is a very thin brown wire, and a very thing blue wire, also coming out from the center alongside the red positive wire. Neither of these have been connected to anything, simply snipped clean and ignored.

WTF are those two wires for?

[Steve]

The power adapter has 4 pins where the cord plugs into the pack to go to the laptop. and the laptop has 4 wires internally. two positive, two negative. on the inside of the laptop he joined both positive to the single positive on the new end, and the negatives to negative as i would have. So i think these two extra wires most likely would cause an issue not being connected.

Sorry this is the best i can do with pics. You see the two thin ones? Any idea what they are?

[Steve]

this is the adapter in stock form....

[Steve]

found this and did some mspaint type work.

A - Thats the type of end they use to go from the power brick to the tips, which can be removed and changed etc.

B - This end was cut off to install a plug that matches the new plug on the laptop. This is where the two extra wires come into play, because the universal cord has 4 wires in it.

[Steve]

nteresting update. My friends laptop i did this too i used the same plugs, also an a135. hooked up his adapter to her laptop, still the same result. Hooked her adapter to his laptop, worked perfect....

i dont see how the mobo could be shot...and the noise from the fan tells me that its getting power.

Any ideas?

[Steve]

and the ticking isnt from the fan, it is the loudest directly over the dialup modem on the motherboard. guess i can try removing it...the thing is getting power obviosly

[Steve]

after a long night with a volt meter i traced the issue back to the cpu socket. No voltage at all and under a good magnifying glass i can see 3 of the pins are burnt out. Not worth all the effort to desolder and replace the socket, fuck that.

[Perspective]

so... after all that the motherboard is toast after all?

[Steve]

well i guess that depends on how you look at it. For most people yea the board is shot, but it wouldnt cost much to repair the board. Just a lot of time to sit there and do it. Her brother had called me last night and said he bought a new one for himself and if i can fix his (blue screen) she can have it. So im just going to put her drive into the other laptop and reboot the OS.

If he hadnt called with that offer i would take the hours to fix the socket.