It seems that there’s a whole range of Toshiba Satellite laptop computers that suffer from a power jack design that is prone to breaking. We see some good and some bad in this. The jack is not mounted to the circuit board, so if it gets jammed into the body like the one above it doesn’t hose the electronics. But what has happened here is the plastic brackets inside the case responsible for keeping the jack in place have failed. You won’t be able to plug in the power adapter unless you figure out a way to fix it.
We’d wager the hardest part of this repair is getting the case open. Once inside, just cut away all of the mangled support tabs to make room for the replacement jack. The one used here has a threaded cuff that makes it a snap to mount the new part to the case. Clip off the old jack and solder the wires (mind the polarity!) and you’re in business.
Anyone know why we don’t see more of the magnetic connectors (MagSafe) that the Apple laptops have? Is it a patent issue?
[Thanks Dan]
Epoxy is the best way to fix Toshibas with pushed inward jacks like the one on the picture. We do that all the time, for video examples refer to: http://powerjackrepair.org/toshiba-power-jack-repair/
What if you break your power plug off INSIDE the computer’s power jack?
This happened with my satellite L505. I could figure out how to get the keyboard area mostly off, but still can’t figure out how to get it completely off to fix this – however, found that super glue worked and so far I have not had this issue happen again for almost a year since the last time I glued the jack in place. It did break pretty easily so I hope for future models they have made this a little stronger.
Pretty much *any* laptop can fail and be repaired this way, of the 4 laptops currently in circulation in this household, the only one that has not had this kind of surgery is the one from my work. I have also repaired the connector on the power brick using one of the many spare adapters that I tend to accumulate from the “universal” type power adapters like this… cut off the old connector, solder wires on to the replacement, and pot in epoxy, or silicone. The quality of the original power adapter from the likes of HP and Dell tends to be a lot better than the after-market ones, so fixing the original is usually worth the effort (and saves a bit of landfill).
There are other companies using magnetically attaching connectors for low power connections. Why use “magsafe” as that is an Apple coined (trademarked?) word for this? Pebble for instance uses it to charge their watches: “•USB charging cable with magnetic connector “
The pogo pins are good, but making the connector shallow allows cleaning your contacts too! You can’t much clean a coax barrel connector. Apple fans were horrified to have their Magsafe overheating but of course cleaning it with soap etc. or isopropyl alcohol was effective at removing what was causing resistance.