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From: Martin Walker on 9 Jul 2010 20:42
My faithful old Dell B130 laptop had a little accident recently. The power
cord got yanked out rather violently and now the laptop doesn't receive
power from the cord.
There is 19 volts DC present at the power cord plug and the jack looks
undamaged from the outside of the case. I've read before that the jack can
become disconnected from the mother board and I suspect this has happened. I
have the Dell service manual and it suggests removing the following items to
get to the "system board":

hard drive
optical drive
memory module
mini PCI card
microprocessor thermal-cooling assembly
microprocessor
hinge cover
keyboard
display assembly
palm rest
modem
speakers connector

Is all this necessary to check/repair the solder joints on the power jack?
Any advice from those with experience is welcome. I'm an electronics tech by
trade and not afraid to dig into it. Just hoping for a shortcut.

Martin

From: Ben Myers on 9 Jul 2010 20:56
On 7/9/2010 8:42 PM, Martin Walker wrote:
> My faithful old Dell B130 laptop had a little accident recently. The power
> cord got yanked out rather violently and now the laptop doesn't receive
> power from the cord.
> There is 19 volts DC present at the power cord plug and the jack looks
> undamaged from the outside of the case. I've read before that the jack can
> become disconnected from the mother board and I suspect this has
> happened. I
> have the Dell service manual and it suggests removing the following
> items to
> get to the "system board":
>
> hard drive
> optical drive
> memory module
> mini PCI card
> microprocessor thermal-cooling assembly
> microprocessor
> hinge cover
> keyboard
> display assembly
> palm rest
> modem
> speakers connector
>
> Is all this necessary to check/repair the solder joints on the power jack?
> Any advice from those with experience is welcome. I'm an electronics
> tech by
> trade and not afraid to dig into it. Just hoping for a shortcut.
>
> Martin

That's about it. Except that there really is no need to remove the
memory or the mini PCI wifi card. Just disconnect the tiny wire leads
from the wifi card.

You have to remove the board completely to solder it. To save people
all this labor, I have been selling Dell laptop motherboards in the
chassis with heat sink, CPU and graphics card (if present). Thoroughly
tested, of course, and with 30-day warranty. I already sold my B130
boards one or two months ago. Been selling off other Dell models and a
few ThinkPad boards.

The power jack becoming disconnected from a laptop motherboard is a
chronic disease across the entire computer industry. All brands and
nearly all models. The jacks are attached to the motherboard only with
soft malleable solder. Wven without a violent yank on the power cord,
the regular insertions and removals of a power cord slowly weakens the
solder and the solder joints eventually fracture, leaving one screwed by
planned obsolescence endemic in the computer biz. If Microsoft doesn't
get us all with the latest memory hog bloatware or omission of drivers
from the latest greatest version of Windows, power jacks will.
Guaranteed. And the solution has a parts cost of maybe $0.25 and
another $0.25 for labor. All the jack needs is a metal band over it,
screwed down onto the motherboard to provide a long-term solid anchor to
the board... Ben Myers


From: Christopher Muto on 9 Jul 2010 21:27
Martin Walker wrote:
> My faithful old Dell B130 laptop had a little accident recently. The power
> cord got yanked out rather violently and now the laptop doesn't receive
> power from the cord.
> There is 19 volts DC present at the power cord plug and the jack looks
> undamaged from the outside of the case. I've read before that the jack can
> become disconnected from the mother board and I suspect this has
> happened. I
> have the Dell service manual and it suggests removing the following
> items to
> get to the "system board":
>
> hard drive
> optical drive
> memory module
> mini PCI card
> microprocessor thermal-cooling assembly
> microprocessor
> hinge cover
> keyboard
> display assembly
> palm rest
> modem
> speakers connector
>
> Is all this necessary to check/repair the solder joints on the power jack?
> Any advice from those with experience is welcome. I'm an electronics
> tech by
> trade and not afraid to dig into it. Just hoping for a shortcut.
>
> Martin

look on youtube for videos that demonstrate this repair. or search this
group for any of the similar question to yours for references. and if
you don't want to do the repair note that you can remove the hard drive
and put it in a usb enclosure so that you can extract your data. good luck.
From: Justin on 14 Jul 2010 00:35
On Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:42:57 -0400, Martin Walker wrote:

> My faithful old Dell B130 laptop had a little accident recently. The
> power cord got yanked out rather violently and now the laptop doesn't
> receive power from the cord.

If only Dell would ask Apple to license its MagSafe connector.
From: Bob Villa on 21 Jul 2010 19:28
Well done, Martin!
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