Dead again ! TOSHIBA laptop with bad design and missing parts ( m50d-a-10w ) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2016, 10:36:42 pm
content: So my dad told me that after turning his laptop off it won't turn on again so i go investigate.First i pulled the laptop apart and oh my god.....You have got to be shitting me !!!That is a bare copper heatpipe practically touching those pads there.And quite a few of them seem to be going straight to the CPU, jesus.....So i looked around the board further and found a missing part, looks like a fuse judging by the designator.Seems like it either got vaporised or knocked off.Although looking closer at where it would sit against i can't see any evidence of it blowing up.Maybe i got lucky and all there is todo is to just pop a new fuse in ?Although if that's the case and it starts working i'll need to add something to insulate those pads under the heatpipe cause they're not looking safe to me.I'd like to ask if any of you guys know where i could get the schematic for this motherboard or if you know the value of the fuse in question (PL504 -PoLy fuse ?).The laptop is a TOSHIBA SATELLITE m50d-a-10w.Thanks.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 07, 2016, 01:08:54 pm
content: I'm writing this reply from the fixed Toshiba.What i did was to pop in a new fuse and just all around clean things up, also added some thick heat sesistant double sided tape to both insulate and support the heatpipe.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 07, 2016, 03:31:54 pm
content: It died again as i opened it to put 4 gigs of ram instead of the 2 g i found inside but it won't work no matter what i do to it, it turns on but there's no display and it doesn't boot because i can't hear the windows loading sound so it gone died again.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 07, 2016, 05:15:48 pm
content: Ok so after some more looking around i noticed one component gone and one barely holding but without a schematic i'm going nowhere.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 07, 2016, 05:36:15 pm
content: I think the OEM model should be Compal LA-A551P. I can even see that in one of your photos. That schematic is easily found.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 07, 2016, 05:45:20 pm
content: This seem more like mechanical damage and thermal pipe bent because the laptop was dropped rather than bad design.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 10:30:09 am
content: Quote from: amyk on February 07, 2016, 05:36:15 pmThanks.Quote from: wraper on February 07, 2016, 05:45:20 pmBent or not i would never leave something like that without any support and insulation.And yes, the damage is mostly mechanical since my dad likes having a beer or two...or three.The PL504 wan an inductor and not a fuse but considering its position it most likely just filters the noise in the power rail, i'll check the schematic to see if that's true.Also found more knocked off parts and a open/cracked USB3.0 matched pair inductor.Thankfully i now have the schematic so poppin' in a couple missing parts will be easy.

author: poot36
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2016, 07:13:44 am
content: In your first post with the side shot of the laptop it does look like the chassis is warped. It could be the effect of the camera lens though.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2016, 03:03:52 pm
content: Quote from: poot36 on February 12, 2016, 07:13:44 amit's not, the angle makes it look like it is though.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2016, 12:44:41 pm
content: According to the schematic PL504 and PL501 are just for emi supression.Found a missing part but there's no component designator but it's for supply filtering (found a cap in parallel), i replaced it with a random SMD cap of similar size.Spent an hour looking for other missing components but didn't find any.At power up LCD stays dark ( no backlight or anything ), windows doesn't boot cause no chime after power-up, APU gets warm.I guess the next thing would be to check voltages, but i'm quite lost to be honest.Makes me wonder why did it even work when it came back to life, i even powered it on/off so it was repeatable but then it died after i tried to pop more ram in it, maybe it was a loose connection that came in contact for that brief moment only?

author: amp-man-andy
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 15, 2016, 02:30:42 pm
content: did you try with 1 stick of memory and do you get any beeps when you power it on?

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2016, 06:06:47 pm
content: Quote from: amp-man-andy on February 15, 2016, 02:30:42 pmNo beeps, nothing.Tried with all kinds of DDR3 sticks and configurations.