Toshiba Satellite m35x, m115, HP NC6000 motherboard repair

By Igor Mateski
(imateski@gmail.com, imateski.blogspot.com)


In this text I will explain a common fault on several laptops: Toshiba Satellite m35, of Toshiba m115, HP
NC6000, and other models of both HP and Toshiba, using the 48-pin Maxim1987 and the 40-pin
Max1532a power drivers). The images however are from an m35 repair.

What are the common manifestations of this defect?
The laptop does not boot,
On power-on, the fans spin up for a few seconds, LEDs blink and everything goes dead,
The laptop turns off even at the slightest movement of the LCD or power cord.

Toshibas licenced service centers will tell you that the motherboard is dead and needs to be replaced.
New motherboards range from $350 up to $500, plus installment fees.
The problem appears elegantly after the warranty expires, so there is no free service any more.
Mine died after two years of faithful service. Official service centers will list buying a new motherboard as
the only solution for this problem. However, a new motherboard is really not the only solution. Fixing the
old motherboard is a better, faster and incomparably cheaper option. Thats what youre up to, right?
The entire process of opening up, repairing, and reassembly of the laptop will take about an
hour, testing period included. With this repair, you will save the laptop AND save hundreds of dollars that
you'd pay to get a used motherboard from Ebay. For this fix, you will need one Philips screwdriver, one
flat screwdriver, pliers, a small sharp knife, a 25-35 watts soldering iron with a very, very fine circular tip,
no larger than 2mm foothold (I used a 1mm tip), some soldering paste/flux and a digital camera.

In order to check if the problem is really a poor solder
joint, remove the plastic bezel that is between the key-
board and the LCD. You can do this by placing a small
screwdriver at the right hinge, between this bezel and
the LCD. Gently lift up the bezel and then move your
way toward the left end, slowly lifting the bezel up. You
can do this without any tools, so that you make sure
you dont scratch anything. Once the bezel is removed,
notice that at the right half of the laptop, between the
VGA and the power plugs, there is a small chip,
10x10mm.





This is the MAXIM 1978 (in some cases 1532) chip, a power
driver that regulates the power supply to all the components of
the laptop. Place a screwdriver tip (or something made of hard
plastic) on the chip. make sure you are not touching any solders.
Now, apply pressure to the chip but not too much. As seen on the
picture, the pressure will mostly be done by the index finger, not
the wrist itself. This is to ensure that you will not damage the chip
itself. Chips are firm, you cant break them so easily, but that does
not mean that you should put all your power into this project. Be
sensible. While pushing the chip down, press the Power button and see if there are any changes in the
behavior of the laptop. If it made no signs of life before, and now you do get a spin-up, or even a startup,
then you have located the problem, and you are half way to fix your laptop.
Lets now continue with the second half.
The blue plastic part on the left of the photo is the VGA
plug. Next to it, the black square is the problematic chip.
To test the motherboard, apply pressure to
the chip, but be careful. Chips are hard, but
still breakable.
The first step is to disassemble the entire laptop in order to get to the motherboard.
Be careful and gentle. There is no need of using force to remove the motherboard. First, unplug the
power cord and battery. Now, remove all the screws that are on the back of the laptop. Then, remove
the plastic bezel that is between the keyboard and LCD. Then, remove the LCD, then the keyboard,
DVD, HDD, and then get a knife and slowly start opening up the top cover bezel (which holds the touch-
pad), but very slowly as you dont want to scratch it up. Before you remove this bezel, gently unplug the
wires from the touchpad and the power-on board. Do not forget to unscrew the screws that hold the
VGA plug on the back of the laptop. You will need pliers for this (for more disassembly instructions, see
this site http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/ToshibaM35X/satM35X_1.htm). Now, release the wires
that connect the motherboard with the phones/mic plugs on the right bottom end of the laptop. Then,
gently lift up the motherboard from the side where the DVD was, and with the other hand gently pull the
plastics outward where the firewire and USB plugs are, on the right side of the laptop. This will ensure
removal of the motherboard with minimal stress on it. You will use the same technique to place the
motherboard back.

You must have soldering experience in order to do this fix yourself. If
you are not experienced, take out the motherboard, go to a TV
repair shop and ask the technician there to just resolder the
MAXIM chip pin by pin. I took the board at several electronics re-
pair shops to see if they can resolder the chip by hot air gun or a
better soldering iron, but none of them wanted to try, so dont be sur-
prised if you end up working on it yourself.
Here is a photo of the power driver that needs resoldering (this one
is taken after the first round of resoldering, so the joints are not per-
fect). As you can see, it is a 48 pin chip, quite small, about
10x10mm, meaning, you have only 1mm between the pins and this
is why you need a very fine pin soldering iron. No wonder the techni-
cians hesitate to resolder it. If you are experienced with the solder
(and practiced on a scrap board with chips this size), lets move on.



As you can see on the
picture, for each pin, you start at position 1 and move the
solder tip to position 2. Position 1 is the end of the pin, and
position 2 is the beginning of the pin at its meeting point
with the chip housing. The soldering tip should touch the
solder joint (position 1) and when the solder metal melts,
you gently move the tip all the way to the casing of the chip
(position 2), and then move back to position 1. The sliding
of the tip makes the solder metal to redistribute along the
entire joint between the pin and the motherboard, making
sure that there will be no cold solders. It would be good to
apply soldering paste to each pin as you move along. Make
sure you dont melt two solder joints at the same time be-
cause there is a great possibility that you make a short cir-
cuit which is very difficult to get rid of on this scale. For this
reason I suggest that you apply the soldering paste one pin
at a time. So, apply the soldering paste/flux to a pin, place
the solders tip at the end of the pin (Position 1), and move it to the chip casing (Position 2) and back to
position 1. Repeat this for each pin and make sure you make pauses so that the chip may cool off. The
general rule of thumb is to solder for 3-5 seconds, and then give it 10 seconds to cool off. If you dont
give it time to cool off, you may cause a temperature pile-up, which can damage the chip.
When you are done re-soldering, take a digital camera and try to get as clear a picture as possible. Use
"super macro" option if your camera has it. That option allows you to get extremely close to the chip and
Dont let the image full you. This chip is
10x10mm size, and it easily fits on you
thumbnail.
Each pin has two positions: Position 1, where the
pin ends, and Position 2, where the pin enters into
the chips housing.
get a good picture. You will use this picture to review all the solders and make sure that you do not have
a short-circuit somewhere, and you will also see if you did a good job of re-soldering. Take as many
photos as you need, and repair the pins that look suspicious. I had to re-solder several pins, but that is
OK. Take your time, work slowly and try to be as patient as possible. On this scale, one bad solder and
you may fry something.
You may also want to re-solder the power
plug, as it is prone to detach from the
motherboard. It is only a minute of work, but
it may prove to be a wise step, so go ahead
and re-solder it. As you can see on the image
(in its right upper corner) the pin from the
power plug has lost contact with the solder.
This happens on all Toshiba M35 machines,
and some other models. The problem lies in it
that this pin is shaped like a cone. The part of
the pin that enters into the motherboard is
thinner than the part visible on the photo.
Also, Ive seen some instances where this pin
doesnt even go all the way through the moth-
erboard.



All in all, a very poorly designed power plug. To re-solder
the plug, just apply some soldering paste/flux, and melt
the existing soldering tin. Do not add new one because
they will not mix. You may want to re-solder it from the
other side of the motherboard also. If you have a vacuum
pump, you may want to remove the old soldering tin alto-
gether, and apply a regular 80/20 soldering alloy. This will
make the juncture more resistant to mechanical loads.






After making very sure that all the solders are well done, and you have no short circuits, take a
brush and wipe out the areas you worked on. I use a hair dying brush because its rough enough to get
rid of stuck solder balls, and it plastic handle is sharpened at the tip which makes it a good tool to poke
at electronics. There may be some balls of solder metal lying around, and if they get loose they may
cause a short circuit and kill your motherboard. Do not rush to reassemble the laptop before you test
and see if youve done a good job of re-soldering. This fix takes time, so be patient. It may happen that
things won't work the first time, so you may need to re-solder all pins more than once. For this reason,
test the motherboard before you reassemble the laptop.
To test the motherboard, you will need the Power On button, screwed onto the top plastic bezel,
which also caries the touchpad. But before you connect the ribbon cables from the touchpad and power
on board, make sure your RAM is in place and connect the hard drive and DVD. Now place the plastic
bezel and connect the two ribbon cables, the keyboard, the LCD, and lastly the power cord. Double
check if everything is seated properly. Then press the power on button. If the laptop boots up - great. If
not, re-solder the chip again. Remember, the outcome of the fix depends on your soldering skills.
If you experience random shutdowns, inconsistency in the battery
charging process, you may want to re-solder the power plug before
you work on the Maxim chip.
The image illustrates the under dimensioned positive
pin. In reality, its getting thinner toward the top,
making is very prone to poor mechanical contact.
(Photo taken fromhttp://www.laptoprepair101.com/
laptop/2006/01/28/toshiba-satellite-m35x-a75-power-jack-
problem/).
Clean up the soldering tip regularly, clean up the old soldering paste from the pins, and apply a
new one. To remove the solder paste, use a napkin or something similar, but make sure its dry. I
cleaned up the pins with nail polish remover applied to a napkin, and the motherboard died (good thing I
had a spare one).
After youve successfully booted up your laptop several times in a row, leave it to work for about
10-20 minutes, just to be on the safe side.
Now that youve fixed the motherboard which caused Toshiba to pay millions of $$$ in lawsuits, discon-
nect everything (including the soldering iron), and slowly reassemble the laptop. Again, take your time,
be gentle and patient. Treat it as a baby after all, you brought it back to life so treat it with respect. On
the back of the laptop, next to every whole you will notice labels F5, F8 or F10. The numbers represent
the length (in millimeters) of the screw that needs to go in the respective wholes. So, you have three
sizes of screws and make sure you match the sizes, in order not to damage the top bezel by placing a
F8 or F10 screw in an F5 whole. This will make an un-repairable bump on the top bezel.

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you. In this way I managed to fix my Toshiba that sat broken for about
a year, waiting for a good service technician to fix it. I didn't think that it will be me who will fix it, and live
to write about it.
All the better.... now I have a fixed laptop and another know-how.



Copyright notice
This text, its images (apart from the power plug illustration) and its ingenuity are my intellectual product,
so please do not reproduce it in any way, and dont sell it.
If your friend needs this document please refer him/her to contact me at imateski@gmail.com, or visit
http://imateski.blogspot.com/2008/08/toshiba-satellite-m35x-motherboard.html for info on how to get this
document. If youve fixed your boss laptop, take the credit but dont forget to mention that youve fol-
lowed an excellent step-by-step guide from a freelance writer whos always looking for the next project
and also point him to my blog and give him my email.