Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

[canadaboy25]

Hey guys, I screwed up my laptop.

I have a Toshiba Satellite A205. I've been having issues with my battery but that's a separate issue. I was probing the connector on the battery while it was running then I very professionally shorted (one of the two outside I think) two pins together. The laptop instantly shut down and there were no LED's on. I pulled the plug and the battery and put them back in then the charge LED's came back on. The laptop will power up but turns right off after about 8 seconds. The BIOS screen shows up and sometimes it will flash onto the Linux failed to boot screen so I know the processor is working. If I go into the BIOS or the boot selection it comes up fine but still turns off after the 8 seconds or so. This happens without the battery as well.

I'm thinking that it's a power supply issue because that's where I was poking around but I could be completely wrong about that.

I have fairly good soldering skills with plenty of smd experience and also an oscilloscope if it comes to that.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Any clues?

[mathog]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

The laptop will power up but turns right off after about 8 seconds. The BIOS screen shows up and sometimes it will flash onto the Linux failed to boot screen so I know the processor is working. If I go into the BIOS or the boot selection it comes up fine but still turns off after the 8 seconds or so. This happens without the battery as well.

Sounds like you did:

power adapter and battery
power adapter, no battery

what happens on boot for

battery, no power adapter?

If that works you may have just trashed the power adapter. That would be a best case scenario, since those are cheap to replace.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

I tried that as well same thing happens. My battery isn't working hence the reason I was messing with it so I don't have a battery to test with anymore because the battery won't output any power.

Another thing I should mention is that it takes about 5 presses of the power button to come on after it turns off.

What kind of component failure would cause this behavior? Seems like a capacitor or similar due to the charge up effect.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Would a picture of the power supply area of the board help?

[mathog]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Would a picture of the power supply area of the board help?

Perhaps somebody else here could use that. I only ever fix broken ports, which can be soldered in. Mucking around with the electronics on laptops isn't something I indulge in - in large part because I don't have the tools to work on surface mount components, and pretty much everything there is surface mount. The other part is that the that break electronically tend to be crap anyway, and it is hardly worth fixing them. Yours might be worth the effort since you blew it up, rather than it failed by itself.

[ilkatek]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Hello Canadaboy
First of all, are you sure that your laptop brand and model is able to function correctly without the battery pack hooked in? Because maybe it needs to know you have a battery attached but if the battery (damaged) does not give back the signal that is attached and loading then the laptop just fails to continue.
In other words if and only if you are sure its not the battery that in some way is causing the problem then and only then I would suggest to open your laptop and search around the area of power inlet jack for any visible damage. Then check especially the MOSFETs around that area you can recognize them as 8 leg cips having usually pins 123 (source) soldered together then pin 4 (gate) by its own and pins 5678 (drain) also together. Be aware when testing (search google for that) that there may be both negative and positive channel types.

[agus putra]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

i think your bios software is corupt due the short earlier

[SteveNielsen]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Try a different ac power supply/charger. You may have damaged it as well as the battery.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Hello Canadaboy
First of all, are you sure that your laptop brand and model is able to function correctly without the battery pack hooked in? Because maybe it needs to know you have a battery attached but if the battery (damaged) does not give back the signal that is attached and loading then the laptop just fails to continue.

I have used the laptop without a battery before so I know that this is not the case.

In other words if and only if you are sure its not the battery that in some way is causing the problem then and only then I would suggest to open your laptop and search around the area of power inlet jack for any visible damage. Then check especially the MOSFETs around that area you can recognize them as 8 leg cips having usually pins 123 (source) soldered together then pin 4 (gate) by its own and pins 5678 (drain) also together. Be aware when testing (search google for that) that there may be both negative and positive channel types.

I have posted a picture of the power supply portion of the board and I see 3 of the devices that you described. I have a fluke 87 V multimeter so what pins on these should I test? I looked up the MOSFET datasheet and apparently it is a P-Channel MOSFET so how do I test that? The two fuses also test alright.

i think your bios software is corupt due the short earlier

This isn't the case because the computer boots past the BIOS and I can see the linux has failed to start screen show up before the laptop turns off so it has already booted to the hard drive.

Try a different ac power supply/charger. You may have damaged it as well as the battery.

I hooked the laptop up to my power supply set at the rated 19 volts and the exact same thing happens so the charger is not at fault.

Thanks for the replies

[atsio]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Give board info, markings on board.

[JaroTech]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Hi, check the voltages on all the pins on the U500 chip, when it's on and after it power down. You will see if it's this chip the problem.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Give board info, markings on board.

Here are pictures of the numbers on the board.

[atsio]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Can you point in a picture where you've shorted the battery connector?

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Hi, check the voltages on all the pins on the U500 chip, when it's on and after it power down. You will see if it's this chip the problem.

I've attached the datasheet for the chip and also an image of all the pins and their functions so is there any specific pin that I should test? I went over with the oscilloscope and the voltages seemed to be ok but I had no idea what I was looking for.

[dj_ricoh]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

I've attached the datasheet for the chip and also an image of all the pins and their functions so is there any specific pin that I should test? I went over with the oscilloscope and the voltages seemed to be ok but I had no idea what I was looking for.

so where are the values ?

every component on the board shows voltage on scope.

depends how you arrange them!

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Sorry it's been a long time since I posted.

I have attached a picture of the power supply portion of the board. I'm not sure but I think two of the outside pins on the battery connector were shorted together. I'm not sure which two.

Are there any specific pins that you guys want the voltages for? I don't think the forum would like me posting 32+ waveform images.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Any ideas?

[canadaboy25]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

Where would I find the transistor that controls the power on and off?

[diif]

Re: Battery Connector Shorted on Laptop

I think this is the schematic.