Compaq Presario R3000 power cord issue

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I'm looking at a friends non-bootable R3000. It has a flashing lightning bolt but does not respond to a power button press. I measured the voltage coming off the power supply and it seems to be correct 18.5 Volts. I measured the power at the docking station interface as described earlier in the thread and the voltage is only 14 Volts. Could this be a symptom of the known issue of the poor connection on the board or more likely a degraded component on the board ? I'd appreciate any comments...
 
After 3 failed attempts to solder by a opening I created on the top of the mother board over the power connection, I finally solved my problems with a big bill of 2$ !

I'll post pictures later but here's what I did...

When to my local electronic shop, bought:

- Female connector for my power cord.
- an 8 pins connector
- Some wires

The 8 pins connector fits perfectly in the Expansion Port. Kept the first and last pin.

Soldered the female connector to wire to connector.

Ground is on left, Positive on right.

Works like a charm!!!


 
I too gave up on the jack after 2 failed repair attempts. So I jury-rigged the expansion connector with parts from Radio Shack and it's now working good.

I have 2 post-mortem observations to share:

- I had replaced the entire motherboard with one from eBay (laptop aid). The replacement board had the same damn problem - wiggling the chord made the lightning bolt flicker on and off. So after I touched up the 4 solder points, I could not get the lightning bolt to light up at all. Did I fry something? I honestly thought I had not over heated the points and had certainly improved the integrity of the connection. What gives!?

- (this may have been discussed, but... ) I'm guessing that the expansion port is not designed to supply power, which is why the lightning bolt does not light up. It also behaves badly (powers off spontaneously) when the battery is installed. But hey, for $4 in parts and not having to take it all apart again, I'LL TAKE IT!

- Dan C.
 
Thanks intelmic,

So with this connector you soldered wires to connect to your power supply ? I believe it's the two outer most connections that I should supply power to:

X111111X

 
yup, and for safety, I removed the 2nd and 7th. You do it by simply heating the metal pin and you will be able to slide it out of it's plastic socket.

So it looks like this:


Negative pin; empty; pin; pin; pin; pin; empty; positive pin


It fits perfectly on width and to make it really tight on height, I put a single electric tape over the 4 center pins so it wont jiggle (and at the same type, protecting the interior of the expansion port)
 

A little late answer, but I get the same voltage on the docking port pins as the adapter gives. Is this with your battery in, it looks like your 14 volts come from the battery and not from the adapter? What do you read with the battery removed?
 


I replaced the entire DC power conecter make sure you use pleanty of solder I used about a map pins worth of solder on each post and my machine is now 100%. A bit of advice Iistead of makein a map for all the srews I just taped them in their respective holes or next too their hole this worked really well and I had no lost screws when I put the computer back together:) The DC power port cost me 10.00 dollars U.S. and the soldering iron was 12.00, solder was 1.95. Just have patients when you clean the connectors I put the solder iron right on the board around each pin hole to clean out the old solder. This works and when I disected the dc coupler sure enough it was cracked. This is a good computer and why Compaq would not step up is a mystery. I like the computer but will never by another Compaq/HP due to the lack of support, which is a really stupid reason to lose a customer over!!! The Ronin
 
Anybody ever heard of comprehensivecomputing.com
They say they repair the jacks or replace them for $99 plus the shipping, anyone use them? They sound legit.
 
I have a problem that I have never been able to resolve, so I am wondering if the symptoms are similar enough. My R3240US randomly shuts off, not shuts down, but instant power cut. When I say random, there does not seem to be a pattern to work with. Sometimes I can run the laptop for hours, other times it shuts off repeatedly.

I have tried numerous other R3240 AC adapters, all of which work just fine on other units. Sometimes it does shut down when the laptop is under increased activity, yet it will also shut down when just idle as well.
 



I ran the standard test, one pass this time and found no problems. I now remember running this long time ago with numerous passes without errors.
 

Have you unchecked the box "automatically reboot" at system failure, in the start-up and recovery setting? (rightclick my computer - properties - advanced)
Does this happen when running off battery only?
 


This is OS independent. Previously I had both Windows and Linux, and it not only will occur in both, but this will also happen before the OS loads. Sometimes before even the boot screen. Besides, this is not a reboot, but a sudden shut off, just as if I pull the power cord with no battery. And this will happen regardless of having any battery in (I have batteries for this, one was never used).
 
Pardon my english, I'm from the Netherlands, what I meant was, does this also happens when running only from the battery power, without an ac adapter attached?
 


Yes, in fact the first thing I did was try it out without the AC adapter, because I thought it was the AC adapter doing this. Well much to my disappointment it shut off repeatedly with just the battery.
 
After the obvious things, like reseating / diagnosing memory sticks, reseating cpu (damn those screw-secured pentiums) and re-applying thermal paste, checking harddisk connection, checking on/off switch, what more can one do.
 
There's 3 contacts in a row, those are the negatives and also keep the jack in place. Opposite the middle one is the positive connection, follow the lead from the jack through the motherboard and you'll see.
 
Hi Guys. Have got the same power cord issue on my R3000 laptop; Have replaced the jack by a new one from ebay but steel no luck. What happens is that before reassembling the laptop i have connected the AC adapter to the new soldered jack for testing purpose, the fans goes ok; have disconnected the ac adapter and reconnected it just to be sure and here nothing happens (the fans doesn't speed up..). After that i disconnected the ac adapter and connected the battery and the fans speed up.
So finally I'm with a laptop wich works fine with battery BUT won't boot up with the ac adapter???

I'm pretty sure the jack soldering is enough good,
what may be the problem and is there something else to test.
Thanks.
 
Eddy, see if there is power on the most left and most right contacts of the docking port connector. If not, the ac-in jack is not good. It was mentioned by someone in this thread that pentiums require soldering of the central pin of the jack on both sides of the mainboard.
 
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