X31 Power Jack Repair Questions

[X31]

New to the forum and have been reading up on a lot of the posts, they've been a great help.

I have an X31 from just over 3 years ago (December 04) and it has been giving me lots of issues just after I dropped it again in January after the warranty had expired.

Lenovo wouldn't replace the power jack for me when the unit was under warranty as they said it was physical damage, which is true. It dropped off onto hardwood floor from about 3 feet which cracked the case near the power jack and the inside of the jack itself (made it loose). To make matters worse, I used a Kensington Power Adapter when my IBM one went before this had happened and had this issue with it randomly blue screening, shutting off and not powering back on, which was fixed by the removing the battery and powering the power button 10 times trick. Similar to this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=50742

I dropped the laptop again in January, twice actually, from the same spot as before and that seemed to aggrevate the problems. It would turn off randomly more often and I would have to fiddle around with the power cord before it would actually charge. Eventually the pin inside the DC Jack broke off and the laptop could not be charged. I was able to boot off the battery for a little bit to the "Windows XP" Screen upon bootup, but it would shut off half way (not sure if my battery was charged though) - but this was repeated about 10 times to the same effect.

The question now is, do you think the entire motherboard is shot or is it just the power jack. If I was to unsolder the old power jack and resolder one, does anyone think that it would work. It doesn't really appear that too many people have tried to do this. Are there any pictures of this procedure at all? My concern is that the X31 power jack does not appear to be popular (Most of the other IBM models are) and might be difficult to remove. I wanted to try to get this repaired for as little cost as possible.

I'm thinking of just getting another motherboard for relatively cheap just to salvage the laptop if that doesn't work, since cosmetically, it isn't that great. It was used a lot - battery has over 650 cycles, and the screen has a couple of pressure marks, so it wouldn't be worth it to sell. If anyone would be able to provide some insight into this, that would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT - One other question, if I use an X3 Ultrabay Slice, would that solve the problem if I charge the laptop off of the slice.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

I don't remember seeing any specific site or instructions on how to remove and replace the DC jack on the X31 but the Hardware Maintenance Manual should provide all of the instructions on how you can get at all of the major systems in the laptop:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-44018

You can certainly try using a media slice/docking station/port replicator to get power to the laptop. Doing so, you are using the connector on the bottom of the system to get power into the X31 and not the DC jack. Of course there could still be some other problem with your motherboard (due to the drops) that prevents using ANY outside power but it would be a cheaper, 'tho possibly impractical, solution for portable operation. I don't own an X31 (yet) but looking at the HMM on page 120, the DC jack appears to be soldered directly onto the motherboard. If you're lucky, it will be one of the very few parts that are still mounted on the board with pins that go through the printed circuit board (as opposed to surface mounting). The hard part is locating a source of a replacement jack. Two sources that I have used in the past for part like this are:

http://www.mouser.com
http://www.digikey.com

You can also see if any of the members here offer a repair service by posting in the Marketplace (jamiphar may be one such person), get the system repaired by a local laptop/computer shop or with an eBay seller like these two that I found :

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0212359894
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0202496746

(Note: No endorsement of these particular sellers; they were simply the first ones I found using a "(x30,x31,x32) repair" eBay search.)