Aspire 3680 - 2682 won't power up

Have me a dead Acer Aspire 3680. My son was using it and it just went black, with no power and no signs of life.

I basically get nothing when I plug in the power and hit the power button. I removed the battery and tested with just the AC adapter. Still no signs of life. No LEDs, etc.

I completely disassembled the beast to see if the power board had the jack still securely attached and it is still fine.

I had the AC adapter tested, so it is fine.

So I guess my question is, how can I verify whether this is a problem with the MB/CPU or if it is a problem with the little power board not delivering power to the motherboard?

I can check for voltage at the battery charge pins. I'm seeing voltage on 3 of the 5 pins. The large one being ground, I'm assuming. Should I see voltage on the remaining 4?

I don't want to replace the MB/CPU and have it be the power board that is the problem, and vice-versa.

Thanks for any tips you might have. I've been eyeing up some used MBs on Ebay along with some systems with broken displays.

Thanks,

Tony

 

Have you made sure the power button isn't broken? I had one that the power button broke and it took a while for me to figure that out after hours of testing components.

 

The button does indeed seem to press the underlying button on the power board.

The one indication that makes it seem like another problem is that the laptop just went silent in the middle of using it.

Thanks for the tip.

Tony

 

Hmm, that sounds like it could be a CPU problem.

The only real way to check if it is a CPU problem is to switch it out I think. That is if you have access to another one. You wouldn't happen to live in the UK would you? Because if you do I have a old Celeron M 520 lying around that I could send you.

I'm not a electrics person so I haven't a clue on where to test the power board to see if it is working OK but if power is getting to the battery I think that should be some indication that it is working.

 

I'm in the US of A... I might check around work to see if we have any mobile processors in our laptop graveyard that can be removed.

If it is a crapped out CPU, then I'll probably just do a CPU upgrade.

Thanks!