I bought a used Dell d630 that didn't power up. Initially there was no voltage showing at the dc jack exposed metals. I read that I should be checking the underside, so I flipped the board over...still nothing. Prodded around, scraped a little bit of something off one of the plates on the back of the jack. More prodding. Plugged it in again and I got several sparks from the opposite end of the motherboard near the battery prongs.
I unplugged and instpected the underside and there was a dark area under some black plastic. Two solder rectangles had black charring between them. One of them distintegrated when probed with a screwdriver. I cleaned up that area, thinking that somehow there had been a short between these two solder rectangles.
On the top side of this section of the board there is one of three black objects within which wound copper wire can be seen. I'm assuming they are transformers for the battery usage or charging process.
Anway, after having cleaned the underside up and completely scraping away the remains of that one solder tower/rectangle, I plugged it in again.
No sparks, and now there is 19 volts at the plates on the reverse side of the dc jack.
I'm assuming that the battery will either no longer charge, or that the computer can no longer be run on battery power.
I cannot detect anything but old solder in this debris I scraped away. The location of the former solder tower appears to have pins on each end. Can I just build up some solder here, making sure not to connect to anything around it, and expect it all to work again?
I unplugged and instpected the underside and there was a dark area under some black plastic. Two solder rectangles had black charring between them. One of them distintegrated when probed with a screwdriver. I cleaned up that area, thinking that somehow there had been a short between these two solder rectangles.
On the top side of this section of the board there is one of three black objects within which wound copper wire can be seen. I'm assuming they are transformers for the battery usage or charging process.
Anway, after having cleaned the underside up and completely scraping away the remains of that one solder tower/rectangle, I plugged it in again.
No sparks, and now there is 19 volts at the plates on the reverse side of the dc jack.
I'm assuming that the battery will either no longer charge, or that the computer can no longer be run on battery power.
I cannot detect anything but old solder in this debris I scraped away. The location of the former solder tower appears to have pins on each end. Can I just build up some solder here, making sure not to connect to anything around it, and expect it all to work again?