Idea for repairing my laptop power jack

I have a perfectly good Asus K501 sitting in a drawer. It can't be powered up because the power jack at the back has come loose inside. For a while we could get it to work by wiggling the cord from the power supply but now it's dead.

I've researched online, and apparently this is a fairly common problem with an easy fix: you either resolder the jack onto the circuit board, or repl ace it.

But you have to disassemble the entire laptop, everything else comes out be fore you can get to that jack, and I'm not confident I can do that job and have it work when I'm done. I've watched it on youtube, and it doesn't loo k easy at all. It's cheaper to buy a new laptop than pay somebody to fix t hat one.

But i just had a thought. The battery pops out, and there is a 9 pin (well , not pin, blade I guess you'd call them) connector where it makes contact. Can I just run the laptop tethered from that connector, using the origina l power supply? It's rarely on batter power anyway. Can I buy that connect or, or maybe individual female blade sockets? How do I find the pinout for the blades? It seems likely to me that 3 are power and ground to the PC,

2 are charging leads for the battery, and the rest maybe monitor state of c harge or something.
Reply to
Tim R
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Get a felt tip pen and a camera and mark subparts and take pics at all disassembly stages, and separate containers for subparts and screws, while following the video.

Reply to
N_Cook

IF... if, if, if... ALL that's required is resoldering the jack... I can't imagine why the repair would be horribly expensive.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

OK do that.

P.S. Can you leave your old laptop carefully bagged by the trash can. I'd wanna pick it up later...

Seriously, your local district is probably growing with smart kids that are yearning for a challenge that might teach them something more than you are willing to give yourself the experience. Maybe two heads better than one, and yes there is youtube....

Not impressed. I'd expect this of a woman. Man up :-(

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Adrian C
Reply to
Adrian C

Because it takes 3 hours to get it apart far enough to even see the jack.

3 hours of shop labor at $85 per will run an appreciable fraction of a new laptop
Reply to
Tim R

Show us the page or URL of a video, I don't see how it could even take

30 minutes to disassemble. I've had my Toshiba all apart, to fix the jack, didn't take that long. Yours could be an outlier. Mikek
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Reply to
amdx

I just watched this video, disassembly is pretty involved, but I think at 15:11 he pulls the board with the power connector.

Mikek

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Reply to
amdx

I'll bet you any shop will charge $200 just to look at it.

Okay, I have another way to ask the question.

Suppose I man up and take the darned thing apart. It's been on my list of projects for a while, but it's been low on the list because of the obvious frustration factor. I hate plumbing but at least I can cut a hole in the w all and replace drywall later if I really have to.

And suppose it doesn't work. I get it all back together, but something's f ried in the AC power circuit in the process

It would be nice to have a backup plan, run some DC in through the battery connector. It's my daughter's old school laptop, and I seem to remember th e battery wasn't holding much charge anyway.

It probably isn't as simple as just putting jolts on V and Gnd, right? The laptop probably has some circuitry to check battery state before turning o n?

I've done a bunch of googling and not found anyone who's succeeded at power ing the laptop through the battery port. (but also a bunch of people who t ried repairing the jack and couldn't get it out without ruining the board)

Reply to
Tim R

I don't know. The batteries have several pins, I'm not sure what they all do. If I found two pins that measured 12.6 volts between them, and ONLY TWO PINS, I would feel comfortable feeding 12.6 volts into the mates on the laptop. I'm not confident you will only find only two pins on the battery that have voltage. If I had it and the battery was not good, I'd tear it apart and see what pins were the correct ones. Might even be able to do that non destructively. Good Luck, Mikek

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Reply to
amdx

Batteries are pretty smart, they have a printed circuit board inside; I don 't know exactly what it does. But they have some kind of overcharge protec tion, and they also communicate with the PC, because the PC knows the state of charge and does some power management. So more pins than just voltage are probably needed.

Reply to
Tim R

I do power jack repairs and replacements quite regularly. For example:

The time it takes is usually a function of how much damage was done to the PCB, whether I have the correct jack in stock, and whether I need to remove the motherboard to replace the jack. For power jacks with connectorized pigtails (some HP and Compaq), I can be in and out in about 45 minutes. For laptops with a zillion screws securing the motherboard, about 2 hrs. Shop rate is $75/hr and I typically quote $80 to $160 for the job, which includes cleaning out the crud, fan lube, keyboard cleaning, and quicky charger/charging test. Incidentally, I find a substantial number of bad power supply cords and connectors, so don't assume that it's the jack without first trying a different power supply.

Hint: Take a photo of the PCB, print it, put it over a sheet of styrofoam, and shove the screws through the page in their original locations. That way, you don't forget to reinstall any screws or put the wrong length screw in the wrong hole.

As for "an appreciable fraction of a new laptop", I'm curious as to what percentage of the cost of a new laptop you would be willing to pay for a repair?

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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks, very helpful. I've been trying to think of a good way to remember where the screws go. Neat trick.

The cost is a good question. I'm still using a laptop (not this one!) I pa id $1,000 for ten years ago. It has a wonky fan and I'm backing up files w aiting for it to die. The local shop quoted me $200 to fix it, which is 20 % of the purchase price, but a new laptop that is faster and better in ever y way would run me $300, or a refurb would be $179.

I think the break point is not a percentage but an amount. $80 I would pay , $100 is a maybe, $120 is definitely no.

Reply to
Tim R

Having done a fair number of these repairs, I can say that the majority of the time spent is to dis-assemble and re-assemble the unit. I have only had to replace a few connectors. In most cases, the solder joints have failed because of mechanical abuse NOT because of poor solder. The jacks often d on't have sufficient support to prevent flexing of the solder joint. My ow n Toshiba unit suffered from a similar fate. A little expoxy around the co nnector to support it better and I have not had a recurrance in 4 years.

Use the advise above to keep track of the dis-assembly process and you shou ldbe able to fix this yourself.

Dan

Reply to
dansabrservices

I'm not sure it's "mechanical abuse" so much as a stress point. Any connector that gets used regularly is likely to show problems. And it is because the solder is most of what's holding the connector in place. Add that epoxy, it will be stronger afterwards.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

I would call that stress point a design defect. Apple had a good idea with the magnetic connection.

Reply to
Tim R

As others have said, don't assume the problem is the jack. I had a Sony laptop that had the same symptom - giggling it made it work. It turned out to the wires in the cable right near the plug. I soldered a new plug on and solved the problem for a year. It then did it again so I shortened the wire slightly and resoldered the connections. Fixed for another year. The wires in the cable were very brittle. Try a friend's power supply before tearing anything apart. Note that this was my wife's laptop. It never left the house and she is not the kind of person to abuse electronics.

Reply to
Pat

I think that the diagnosis is correct. A second known good cable was tried, and the center pin in the jack wiggles slightly when pushed. I think that I may also have tried the technical department at Best Buy or Staples.

Reply to
Tim R

Oh. I had a second laptop that was assumed to have the same problem. I didn't have an extra power supply to try, so I took it in to Staples. They found a power supply that would fit and I was back in business.

Reply to
Tim R

Given that the unit is unusable -- and those, technically, junk -- it seems that the time spent to fix it would be worth the trouble. If you fail, you haven't really lost anything -- except your time.

I think highly of ASUS products. (My last two computers used ASUS mobos.) That alone would be justification for trying to fix it.

Here's a possibly useful suggestion... Find an undisturbed place to work on the machine. Then, do a little bit at a time -- no more than perhaps ten minutes. When you feel tired or irritated, stop and come back the next day.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

What did you use? "Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang"?

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

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