Laptop motherboard required

My daughters laptop has stopped charging the battery. The battery is fine in another identical laptop so I dont believe it is a battery problem. The battery from the 'other' laptop will not charge in the problem one.

I believe the easy solution is a new motherboard. The original supplier no longer has any spares available.

The laptop was sold in the UK by Novatech but I think it is 'generic' It has a model number L51II0 on the label on the base. It also has 'Made in China' 63GL51013-10 CM-2.

The motherboard was made by Uniwill. The only codes I am aware of are ML 94V-0 E251244 and a date (?) code 0704- 171. This is about right for when it was bought.

I have tried Googling but the best I have come up with are some "ex-equipment" sold for spares.

I have had problems in the past with the power connector on the board but I believe these have been resolved (mostly by a U-shaped wire from the back of the pin to the board to allow a little flexing). It worked fine for some months before the charging problem appeared.

It is running Vista and the icon in the system tray initially shows charging when the cord is plugged in but after about 4-5 cycles it stops moving. The info bubble continues to show 'plugged in: charging' but no power goes into the battery (% shown remains constant).

I would appreciate any suggestions for a source or any ideas for what might be wrong.

Reply to
David
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Unfortunatly those two are codes which IIRC indicate the material of the PCB, and the place which made it! Google either and count how many products share the same, and how many folks are going nowhere with their "can't find a driver" queries...

and a date (?) code 0704- 171. This is about right

OK, Uniwill L51II0 gets some hits.

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Probably not much help but this apparently was sold as an Advent 5303 Laptop.

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Advent 5303 Mainboard Motherboard 92GL55060-C1 WORKING
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- £79

For that price, I'd rather visit BigPockets?

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Adrian C
Reply to
Adrian C

You don't say...can we assume you've tried swapping the power supplies? How many contacts on the power plug? One of the causes of not charging can be that the computer cannot verify the CORRECT power supply. If the communication line to the PS is faulty, that can happen. Your socket is already damaged, maybe the comm pin came loose? Or shorted to the power and blew up the sensor? Same thing happens at the battery. IF one of the several contacts is faulty, you get weird symptoms. Shine 'em all up and compare the signals to the good laptop. I've seen bent or broken pins and solder joints around the pin can fracture and open up. Does not take much resistance at these currents to confuse the charge controller.

There are some fets between the power and the battery. Compare to the good one to see if something is open there.

I don't know if there's any real sensing in this circuit. May be that the computer turns on the icon when it sends the control voltage to turn on the charger, but doesn't verify that it happened. The info bubble may be open-loop indication of the control signal logic. Later it senses a problem and turns off the icon?????

There's a program called PCWizard. It can talk to the battery on many laptops and tell you what it thinks the battery status/condition is. Compare the two laptops. There may be some useful conclusions.

The info bubble continues to show 'plugged in: charging'

Reply to
mike

Yes, tried the obvious things. The power connector is 2 pin, or rather the coaxial type power connector. New power supply does not help.

Good point. I haven't looked around the battery connector. OK, I haven't tried all the obvious things! The way the battery physically connects should give reasonable protection from movement. I will check the soldering of the pins though.

The two connectors are about 4 inches apart so there is a lot going on between them! I'll try following some tracks to see if I can find a difference.

Agreed, you never know which moving indicators mean anything with Microsoft!

I'll try that.

Reply to
David

I did and there are a lot! I didn't have the manufacturer name when I was searching before.

Close but this is the L55, however there is a page for the L51. Thanks for the pointer.

That is the L55 I think - mine is 63GL not 92GL.

Thanks for the hints which I will try to follow up. David

Reply to
David

I understand this, there are only two wires feeding the thing, dealing with charging current while running is the job of the mobo. Aside from bad connections most likely the mobo needs to be replaced unless you know someone REALLY good.

But it's not an "easy" solution by any stretch of the imagination. If I never work on a laptop again it will be too soon, unless the money is very good. If the two laptops remain in the same household, it would be easier to deal with charging batteries and swapping them off. Everybody sleeps sometime.

I didn't do this completely, but I had it apart bigtime. This guy makes it look easy, but let me tell you, you better have a steady hand, know how the connectors work (I broke one), alot of patience and really kickass eyesight.

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Now, if this doesn't work, here's one of our ol' boys who figured aout another way :

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Show that last one to your kids.

J
Reply to
Jeff Urban

To update, I compared the laptops with PC Wizard (as suggested) but no differences showed up. About the only other thing I can try is the connections from the battery plug to the motherboard. Another motherboard out session - I'm getting quite good at it!

The motherboard extraction is a fiddle but only takes about 5 minutes.

I dont fancy fault finding on it as I have no idea what most of the components are supposed to do. Bring back discrete components and circuit board tracks you can see without a magnifying glass, and the suitcase to carry your lugable in!

Sourcing a replacement is an issue at the moment but I have an un-tested one on order - long shot but I may be lucky.

Thanks again everyone for the suggesstions.

David

Reply to
David

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