Toshiba Cradle USB Power Mod

I took this from my old blog.

This mod is quite simple. It involves taking the cradle apart and solder the 5V power rails from the usb straight to the power jack. I am not sure why Toshiba did not do this in the first place. It saves a spot on my power bar and there is one less cable to deal with. Here it goes.

Technical Power Stuff (skip if you don’t care):
USB has a power limit of 500mA. The toshiba ac adapter outputs 5V at 2A. You would think that usb would not provide enough current. I thought so too, so I measured it because it did not show up in device manager. The charging circuit for the lithium battery is a pulse charger so it didn’t register any current, although for the e750 with wifi, it says 2mA. So when I measured the current, it is about 230mA. Charging through the usb is slower because of the lower current. It took around 2-3 hours to charge fully instead of 30mins but whatever. =)

1. Taking apart the cradle: Peel the little padded foots on the bottom to expose the screws; put those somewhere that no one will touch, get stuck to them and run off, I lost mine that way =(. Once those screws are out and it comes apart, unscrew everything on the inside as well to remove the circuit board.

2. You should see something like the picture above right now. Cut one or two wires to size and strip a tiny bit off the ends. Solder them like so. NOTE: I have discovered that by using the usb power, they share a common ground therefore, you really do not require the white/orange wire. Once done, if you’re confident of your soldering, put everything back together. If not, test it like this in the next picture.

If you did it correctly, the charging light should come up!

Picture of a e750 testing the cradle.

Here is a picture of a e330 charging without the ac adapter. =)

For those that are wondering if you can use the ac adapter while it is plugged it, yes you can. If you are skeptical, I tried it myself. It works because both power sources are in parallel. Here are the pics.

This entry was posted in cradle, hacks, mods, toshiba, usb. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *