Argh, ok, I need help here. I had my laptop sitting on the couch with my headphones plugged in because I was watching a DVD. My 6 month old lab puppy, being the crazy dog that she is, came bounding through the living room like a freight train, caught a paw on the headphone cord, and pulled the lappy off the couch. Luckily for the laptop, there was a blanket on the floor which cushioned the fall, so no issues with the laptop, except...

...the headphones pulled the headphone jack off of the motherboard completely, from what I can tell, and now I have no way of using the laptop with phones. Speakers work fine, line in recording works fine (not that I use it much), but the jack is messed up.

So I have a free PCMCIA slot that I never use, and I was thinking about finding an audio card to throw in there, but I have no idea what would even work with *nix... any ideas?? Doesn't have to be super high end or anything, I just want something I can listen to my headphones with, and hopefully something that can coexist with the onboard audio (since that will run the build in speakers), or a card that can loopback to the speakers.

Thanks all!

-olly

www.alsa-project.org

That should get you started, I believe most PCMCIA based solutions are fairly well supported to be honest.

Seablade

Thanks, I'll check them out and see what I can find.

-olly

why not try a usb soundblaster??

Have you opened the case up to see if there is an easy fix for the broken plug? It might be pretty easy, maybe a broken trace or even if the jack is broken you might be able to replace that. I hate to have a pcmcia card sticking out of the side of anything that moves around. My work laptop just sits in my tool box so that one doesnt really bother me too much.

Yeah, I popped it open, it disconnected from the solder and snapped a wire, as well as what looks like a blown transistor on the motherboard (I'm a novice at board electronics at best, so excuse my poor terminology here). I suppose I could probably re-solder it, and see if I could make it work, and it may come to that, but not sure if it's worth that much effort. This laptop will be replaced in about 6 months anyway, so something cheap and temporary will work better.

I did find a USB Audio adapter, the Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro that looks pretty promising. It's only 30 bucks at Worst Buy, so I might just try it out, see what I can do.

-olly

get yourself a Soundblaster 2ZS notebook card. It is PCMCIA and it will drop your jaw on the difference in quality.

oh and there are some people selling a few on the f/s section.