Sega Nomad Power Issue

So, without posting any pictures yet (which when I do will hopefully shed some further light on my issue) I am having some problems with my Sega Nomad.





Bought it off eBay and was originally listed as faulty. DC power jack was very loose, and after I opened up the Nomad I could see straight away that the DC jack was in a fairly bad shape. So I reflowed the solder to the three points (Ground,Power and whatever the third point is for, anyone know what its for?). It worked fine, for a while, but then developed the same issue, very itermitent power connection. If I wiggle the DC jack in a particular direction, with any pressure then the unit turns off. So I cracked it open and replaced the DC jack with one from a PSOne, soldered again. This fixed it for some time, until eventually he same thing happens.

So, I completely removed the DC jack, and soldered directly to TP201 (Power) and TP202 (Ground). The Nomad will not turn on at all. I am at a loss, should I be wiring my 9V supply to some different solder points in the Nomad, is TP203 involved at all? I could not find a schematic anywhere for the Nomad.

Also I don't have a battery pack to test, so my only option is DC power.

 

I'd look for a direct replacement from a Nomad @radiokid. If that doesn't work then you'd know for sure that something else was up.

 

I think I know what I might have done. I've overworked the solder points on the PCB and noticed that this happened. These arent my pictures by the way but it explains what I think has happened. Pictures from this artivle.

http://www.laptoprepair101.com/fortify-damaged-power-jack-connection-in-laptop/



In my example this has actually happened with all three points. The positive, ground and what I now know to be the "switched jack". As I understand it this third point is used to detect when a DC plug is inserted so that the unit no longer uses battery power. I think that in removing the trace/track/through-hole piece of copper the Nomad doesn't detect it is being powered by a DC source, and as I have no batteries it simply doesn't turn on. If someone could confirm that this is how the Nomad works I would appreciate it. I looked on this website to try and understand this third DC input point. http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/10731/wiring-a-dc-socket-why-three-pins

So my options are to permanently wire the third point to ground so it always assumes DC input, or fix all three points as per the article I got those pictures from. I prefer the latter as I could then use batteries if I so wished.

 

I can see the vias are gone and a trace is ripped off from the center hole Looking from the first picture. It will not work as it.

If it was already loose then that likely wasnt you.

There is a user @skyway1985 that vould help with pinouts. Or try to find pictures online.

 

Yeah so I gave up on the DC input; couldn't get it working no matter what.,so on to plan B. I've connected the 3rd pin (input plug detection) to ground which connects the battery terminals into the circuit. This is usually done by the DC socket when no plug is inserted but since this isn't an option any more I've gone for this permanent solution. I then wired up the battery terminals to 9V DC and switched on, hey presto it worked.

Since my overall plan is to power the Nomad by Lithium Ion batteries this solution will do for me. I may even internalise them in the Nomad body and wire in a new DC socket (somewhere else in the case) for charging the batteries. And since I won't be touching the original DC input pins I shouldn't have any more issues.