Saturday, July 24, 2010

Gateway MA7 / MX6930 No Power will not charge battery fix

Got a Gateway model number MA7 MX6930 in with no power none of the LED's would light up and the battery would not charge.

Gateway MA7 motherboard repair

The Gateway MA7 would run just fine off of a charged battery but no matter what charger was used it would not power on with just the AC adapter.

The MA7 / M6930 quick spec's are

Processor Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology
Intel® Core™ Duo processor T5200
1.60 GHz | 2 MB L2 Cache | 533 MHz FSB
Screen 15.4-inch Widescreen Ultrabright™ WXGA TFT (1280 × 800)
Chipset Intel® 945GM
Memory 1024 MB 533 MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Memory (2 × 512 MB)

Full spec's are at the end of the Post

After some poking and prodding I found the issue is in

the mid-plain on the system board. And no amount of changing the power jack would help .. The traces sandwiched between the layers of the motherboard have been corroded away ...

To fix the issue you will need to follow the tear-down guides for the GateWay MA7 (these are a work in progress links to follow)

here are some pictures of what was needed to be done.. basicaly you need to short the center pin of the power jack to the closest chip on the system board... sorry did not get before pictures for you but was not sure if this would really work.









Put the Heat Sink and fan back on to test before putting all back together ... you will need to remove the Heat sink to get the system back together. ..
And here is the rest of it.

Full Specifications of the Gateway MA7 MX6930:
Processor Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology



Intel® Core™ Duo processor T5200



1.60 GHz | 2 MB L2 Cache | 533 MHz FSB



Screen 15.4-inch Widescreen Ultrabright™ WXGA TFT (1280 × 800)



Chipset Intel® 945GM



Memory 1024 MB 533 MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Memory (2 × 512 MB)



Total Slots: 2 DDR2 Slots | Available Slots: 0 DDR2 Slots



Video Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950



Up to 128 MB shared video memory



Audio High Definition 2-Channel Audio



Built-in Speakers



Optical Drive DVD+/-RW Multi-Format Double Layer (up to 8.5 GB)




Write maximum:


8X DVD+/-R, 6X DVD-RW, 8X DVD+RW, 2X DVD-R DL, 2.4X DVD+R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 24X CD-R and 16X CD-RW discs



Read maximum: 24X CD-R/RW/ROM, 8X DVD-R/RW/ROM, 4X DVD+/-R DL, RAM, discs



Media Reader 4-in-1 Digital Media Manager



Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, Memory Stick-Pro, and Multimedia card (MMC)



Modem 56K ITU V.92 ready Fax/Modem (RJ-11 port)



Network




* 10/100 Mbps built-in Ethernet



* Intel® PRO/Wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g (3945ABG) Including SecureEasySetup™




Interfaces




* 4 - USB 2.0 Ports



* 1 - VGA External Connector



* 1 - S-Video External Connector



* 1 - IEEE 1394 Port



* 1 - RJ11 (Modem)



* 1 - RJ45 (Ethernet LAN)



* 1 - Microphone In



* 1 - Headphone / Audio Out



* 1 - Kensington Lock Slot




Pointing Device Integrated Synaptics Touchpad with Vertical Scroll Zone



PCMCIA 1 - Type I or Type II; Card Bus



Battery 6-cell Lithium-ion0





Pictures are of actual system.

























13 comments:

Good job - I am getting power all the way up to that point already though. I am even getting ~18.5v on the other side of PD16. With the battery in and power supplied - I get four flashes from the front power light.
Not sure what the four flashes are, maybe the battery is shorted... I should check that.
The customer pushed to hard on the closest USB plug and knocked off C646 and maybe PC149. Maybe these missing capacitor(s) took out part of the charging circuit? Or if not related, maybe the GND from the USB cage shorted out something and blew charging circuit?
The power jack is solid and solder joints all appear fine under magnification.
Runs with charged battery of course... driving me nuts to say the least.

http://ebuychance.com/images/MA7/MT6707USB_broken.jpg
http://ebuychance.com/images/MA7/MT6707_back_top_view.jpg
http://ebuychance.com/images/MA7/MT6707_left_top_view.jpg

I will keep digging, but any pointers or advice would be appreciated.
Big Thanks - ebuychance

I had the same charger/power problem. I had a friend resolder the power jack. Now when it's charging, that section of the board gets very hot. The chip nearest the + pin and the 'ON' switch get so hot it will burn your finger. What should I do now?

CDeel,

Not sure what is going on ... but you may have a short some where in the board causing the chip to heat up ... What ever it is ** It can't be good** I only had the gateway for a limmited amount of time. So unfortunately I don't have one to test.. It is possible some one seeing this post may have an answer for you. So Check back.

Hi CE,

I tried soldering to the same chip that you did on the board and the little strip came off. Is this chip still good? if it is where else can I solder to?

Ok, I soldered a jumper from the + post to the nearest chip. That solved the power/charger problem. Charges great! Problem now is the computer won't work. I push the on button, the power light comes on, the harddrive motor starts, the fan starts and within a few seconds, slows to a stop as if it ran out of power. Nothing at all displayed on screen. Don't know what to do now.

Thanks very much for the information. I did the bypass as you instructed and it has solved the problem.

Any tips for getting the center pin soldered? I originally thought you meant the post that comes out of the jack and makes a right angle turn. The center pin is a tiny dot in a fairly deep hole.

CE, I know this post is old but I just feel the need to express my thanks for your inspired genious that steered you toward a lasting fix for this issue. I have 3 of these dead Gateways on my shelf and just revived the first one. Too cool! I spent hours trying to figure out where the "open" was that was keeping the voltage from its appointed path. My hat is off to you, again with my thanks for sharing a well illustrated fix.

Good job CE, just wondering I have the same laptop here with charging problems, when I went to try it out, smoke started to come out around the pwr jack port, is the board fried? what would cause the smoke, short? bad + connection, charger (all in one replacment type)
any idea's?

thx

well, i just killed an already dead motherboard, it had other issues too, but now i don't want to do this to my good one, just wasted a bunch of money. Anybody willing to help?

I find this interesting because I have repaired about 20 of these gateways and I am jumping the wire to another location. There is black diode just to the right of the red wire in the first picture, I go from main dc pin to either of the 2 pins on the jack side of the diode and they charge again. Anyone figured out where to jump to on a AMD board for these ma7's or ma3's?

I have a MA3 with the exact opposite condition. It charges and runs fine while AC adaptor is plugged in. Will not turn on with AC adaptor not plugged in.. Any ideas would be helpful thank you.

Old post but saved life of my old workhorse. I registered and posted this to say THANK YOU^FF!

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