[CS-FSLUG] Laptop Power Jack

[Tim Young]

This looks like a decent page on how to disassemble your computer.
http://ahwee.com/how-to-disassemble-laptop-dell-latitude-d620

The power appears to be built into the motherboard, but I have only 
found two main ways this gets "disconnected".  Usually, there are 
some solder joints where the power plug meets the motherboard.  This 
is a page talking about some of those issues on a different laptop:
http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2006/01/28/toshiba-satellite-m35x-a75-power-jack-problem/
I can often simply heat up the solder where the plug meets the laptop 
and "re-solder" it.

If you have opened computers before and if you have done some 
soldering before, a laptop is not as frightening a prospect as many 
people think.

Laptops have a lot of screws, but with a little caution, they are not 
difficult to take apart.  The main thing is to set yourself up so you 
can keep the screws separate from each-other and have a way to 
remember which screw came from where.  Lots of different laptop 
components have different sized screws, and putting a long screw in a 
hole where a small screw is supposed to go can cause issues.  If you 
are careful not to "force things" and you keep your screws in 
separate piles for each section you remove, you should be fine.

I have also seen it where the whole corner of a motherboard was 
cracked off and the whole power section was no-longer connected.  
That one took a little more creativity to get working.

     - Tim Young

On 12/17/2011 4:40 PM, Ed Hurst wrote:
> I horse traded and obtained a decent Latitude D620. However, the 
> power jack seems to have been disconnected. That is, the previous 
> owner took it to some independent shop to have a wifi module added, 
> and from images I've seen it's right next to the power jack, which 
> is on the back edge. The problem arose right after, and the shop 
> refused to look into it. Battery works fine, but the two or three 
> Dell power bricks which I know work on other systems don't work on 
> this thing.
>
> I've not dismantled a laptop before. Just how hard can it be to 
> find out whether I can identify the issue?
>