[COLUG] Need soldering help

[jep200404]

Judd Montgomery wrote:

> I have a 
> Dell D600 laptop with a bad power jack, or most likely the connection to 
> the MB is bad.  Its common with these.  I want to solder a new one on, 
> but my soldering skills aren't that great. 

Of course, you run Linux on that laptop. That makes it on-topic. 

There are two difficult parts: 

1. Getting the right part. It can be harder than you think. 
   Fudging the wrong conector in, can be even harder. 

2. Disassembling the laptop to get the connector. 

>From the way you write, it seems that there's a problem in the 
connector, or near it, but you don't know which. There's also 
a possibility that the problem is in the power cable. Many people like 
to bend cables hard, close to either end. This causes many cables 
to become bad prematurely. 

First, I would figure out which half the problem is in. 
I.e., power supply and cord or laptop. Having another 
compatible laptop or power supply to swap with can help 
narrow that down. 

It's unlikely that the connector itself is bad, 
unless it absorbed the blow of a fall. 

A dirty connector can cause much grief. 
Of course the solution for that is to clean the contacts. 

Mechanical abuse could damage the connector, its solder joint 
with the motherboard, or even crack the motherboard itself. 
Let's hope the motherboard per se is OK. 

---------------------------------------------------------------

Do the easy stuff first. 

Divide and conquer: Figure out if the power supply and cable 
   or the laptop has the problem. 

If it's in the laptop, carefully disassemble it and try to 
figure out by just looking (albeit with bright light and 
good magnification) more exactly where the problem is. 

If it's in the power supply, figure out if it's a bad 
section of wire. If so, cut out that section and resolder 
what's left. I got a nice laptop free this way. Of course, 
if somebody had the habit of bending the cable sharply 
right at the connector, then when you cut out the bad 
part, there no good part left to solder to, so you have 
to find a new connector which can be _difficult_. 

As far as soldering, I can do that at lunch. 
But first, do the debugging first (starting with the easier 
stuff). It sucks to go to the trouble of finding a part, 
and putting it in only to find that that wasn't really the 
problem. 

Jim