Fixing a Toshiba A30 with Broken Power Jack (In Downtown)
I traded in the Toshiba A30 on 16May2013. The owner told me that it had missing AC power adapter. It is too heavy for him to carry back to his home country in Africa.
At home, I tried to use a universal power adapter to check it. However, the pin inside the power jack was missing. The screen covered near the latch has cracked. Leaving the crack as it, I needed a power jack and an adapter. For safety reason, I bought a genuine Toshiba power adapter matching the specification which is 19V, 4.74A.
To replace the power jack, I disassembled the laptop to get the motherboard out. The plastic connector for the right speaker due to aging was bristle and it broke when I tried to disconnect it from the motherboard. I used a connector from another motherboard and replaced it.
When I powered up the laptop, it has a Windows 7 Ultimate inside. The device manager reported 2 devices with exclamation marks. They were Network Controller and Display. Since wireless was not working, it must be related to the Network Controller. I tried to locate Toshiba A30 drivers. Only the UK site has archive drivers for A30. However, the Broadcom driver did not work for this laptop. I swapped another Broadcom wireless card. The driver was installed automatically and wieless is working.
For the Display driver, I also tried to download the Intel display driver. It complained that the OS is not supported. The generic driver loaded by Windows 7 supports resolution up to 1024 x 768 which is less than the 1600 x 1200 in the A30 specfication.
I ran YouTube to check the sound and video. They are working. I fully charged the battery and it ran for over 2 hours. A teenager in Vancouver east picked it up in July saying that it was for his homework. In a few days, he wanted to switch to my other laptop becaue he could not load his favorite XP Warcraft 3 game on it. He returned the laptop to me. When I was home, I found that the latch was broken.
Since the screen cover was cracked before, I ordered the full screen cover assembly with latch from the UK and repaced it. I uninstalled his program, deleted his user ID and checked the laptop again.
On 31Aug2013, a young lady living in downtown interested on it. We met at a coffee shop that she could check if the laptop was good for her. We tried the wireless in the coffee shop but it was very slow. She trusted that it works and emailed the money to me. The email did not come instantly. She phoned her bank that it might take half an hour. I told her not to wait. When I returned home, the email came. I asked my wife to deposit the money to her account since my bank account does not accept email transfer. In a minute, the lady texted me that she received the confirmation from bank. I replied her that the deposit was to my wife's account.
The laptop is back to service in downtown. Also, I am glad that the honor system although is deminising by certain groups of new immigrant, it is still mostly here in Vancouver. For this, I could return home to enjoy dinner rather than waiting outside.
