Old dell m1330 charging problem

Hi,

I have a six-year old M1330 which--after the copper mod and change of cpu--is still serving me well. However, it's begun to get very finicky about charging the battery. I can leave it plugged in overnight and it will not have charged at all.

I don't think it's a charger problem or a battery problem--for I've changed both and the problem is the same.

If I jiggle the part of the lead that fits into the computer itself, or if it take it out, rotate it (plug is hexagonal) I can usually get it charging again. But the condition is worsening and I fear a time will come when, no matter how much I jiggle or rotate, it will not charge.

It seems a shame to give up on a perfectly functional computer because of what looks like a minor flaw. But does anybody know what the nature of this flaw might be, and, if I were to try to repair it, which part of the dell I should be replacing?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

Happened to my M1330 a year ago. I think the charging port comes on a separate board so you could, in theory just replace that, or just the whole motherboard. It was more effort than it was worth, to me, so I just sold my M1330 and moved on to an even worse temp laptop that I've had for the last year in wait for a Haswell replacement.

 

Thanks Tabris,

I wasn't sure what it was called, but searching ebay for charging board turned up some results which look promising. They're only £10 or so, so I suppose they're worth a go. I agree it wouldn't be worth changing the whole motherboard.

Thanks again for your help.

 

I'm not exactly sure what you bought, but the M1330 charging port definitely doesn't come on its own PCB...

 

Thanks Commander Wolf

fortunately, I haven't bought anything yet. There's something called an m1330 charger board on sale on ebay which looks like it connects to the Motherboard and which I thought might be connected to the charging of the battery. I thought I might give it a go as they're cheap. But if that's wrong--and your post indicates that it is--I'll abandon the idea.

Any ideas what I could try to do? Replacing the whole motherboard seems a bit of a waste--plus, with all the early failures of the m1330 motherboard, I'm worried there are probably a lot of dodgy ones out there.

Thanks for your help.

 

The charger board connects the motherboard to the battery and some of the USB ports... it has nothing to do with the AC jack.

If you're handy with soldering and your problem is actually just a bad jack you can try to desolder the old jack and replace it, but other than that there's not much you can do short of replacing the motherboard...