My personal battle in repairing my Asus Zenbook's DC in

I'm struggling here saving my laptop. Zenbook's charger gives problems to lots of people google says, and it was giving me problems too. I tried buying a new one, but it ended up not working well either.

So I decided to burn my fingers (and then put white burn cream all over):

http://i.stack.imgur.com/UctCw.png

Well, you know what I mean, this happened [trying to what this guy did:][2] **solder the charger's cable directly into the motherboard**, since the problem was a mix of a bad DC IN jack and a bad charger jack. And, oh well, me being an idiot an grabbing the solder by the metal part because I was distracted. So now things are personal.

Why didn't I solder it to the motherboards DC IN adapter? Well...

http://i.imgur.com/YzM4NMe.png

It was an accident, I was trying to de-solder it but it broke because it's in a weak corner on the motherboard. So **then I soldered it directly to the board** (I had to scrape it first a little bit to show the conductive path)

http://i.stack.imgur.com/YD9mI.png

The shot is in a bad angle but the connections seem to be OK.

One important doubt I have is... the charger's jack has THREE points I can solder to. I was expecting only two (V+ and GND), but there are three. Why? I was expecting what I understood from the AC adapter's diagram: http://i.imgur.com/MAuWjHd.png. Anyways, this is how I solded it:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/gQqLq.png

And it seemed to work! Even though I only soldered two cables (or jack sleeves/pin)For the first time after the crisis the laptop seems to power up. But the screen remains black, and its behaviour is weird: the caps lock is lit (and pressing it doesn't turn it off) and the laptop doesn't seem to reboot or poweroff. Take a look at this gif:

http://i.imgur.com/Zr2qtto.gif

Just in case: in the gif it's my finger trying to power off the unit. To my surprise, it lits up again just like when it powers up (but at this point I don't think there's anything booting... )

What can I do? Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

Have you measured using a multimeter the voltage differences between the 3 points?

 

Yes, 1-2 is 19V and 1-3 is 17V. 2-3 is 0V. I've tried the first two pairs, both give same results.

Then I scraped a little on the side: http://i.imgur.com/roicHVL.png and I discovered a couple more "wires" in inner layers. The topmost wire is more visible in this pic http://i.imgur.com/bzvsXjz.png

Anyways, I tried soldering that side to get all wires like the original pin would. It's very hard to get the solder to stick there, I did my best and tried to boot. Screen is still black and the capslock is locked on, but now when i "turn it off" it goes off.

I'm lost now.

PS: When connected, I measured 1-2 and 1-3 and then they gave 0V. Why is that?

 

You tell me, you wired them up

Remember a PCB is made of many layers and signals will be routed down to them such as power and ground to go off where they are needed.

 

Dirty power/insufficient power looks like your problem. Without knowing the exact schematics of the motherboard in that area you're playing a dangerous guessing game. If I were in your situation I would either buy a new motherboard and charger or attempt to reconnect the corner that broke off. For most Asus laptop boards the middle layer of the board is ground, so you have to be very careful splicing it back together you could easily start a fire. You might be missing a resistor or capacitor on the corner that broke off that would lower the voltage and send it to one of the components that is now getting too much power.

Good luck

 

Hello,
I have recently done almost these exact steps went thru two DC in ports but my epic fail of soldering and the burnt, fragile part of the mother board broke. Found this website that may help you if your still around

http://asusux31e.blogspot.com

 

If you got it together please send our upload a picture of the soldering!!