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Dad's having problems with his 9300 sound; replace a daughtercard?

post #1 of 11
3/8/08 at 11:49am
Thread Starter 
My dad's 9300, well out of warranty, is not acting right. Sound comes out of headphones, but not the speakers. If he presses the headphone down in the jack, he can get sound to come out of the speakers.

We're thinking that he's somehow damaged the headphone jack, and needs it replaced. Is there a daughtercard for the sound jacks, or is it part of the motherboard itself? I can't remember from opening up my E1705, and I figured I'd ask the experts.
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post #2 of 11
3/8/08 at 12:16pm
To my best knowledge, there are no daughter cards in the 9300. Everything is connected to the mobo. If when you press down on it things begin to work, that indicates a loose connection or broken solder joint of some kind.
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post #3 of 11
3/8/08 at 12:37pm
Looks like you're gonna need a new motherboard
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post #4 of 11
3/8/08 at 12:55pm
I had the same problem and got a new motherboard.
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post #5 of 11
3/9/08 at 12:05pm
Hi,

The jack might have some dust or dirt in it as well.Use some compressed air and see if that helps.If that does not work,get some ultra thin cotton swap sticks and dip it in some industrial strength alcohol and insert it in the jack and clean out the jack.I used this cleaning method a lot in the past to clean out many headphone jacks of Motorola two way radios when I worked in the film industry support in the past.

If all above does not work,I agree with the above that might be a loose solder joint.

Regards,

Ko
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post #6 of 11
3/9/08 at 9:33pm
the 9300s aren't too bad to take apart, especially with dell's own guides, so i'd say crack it open and see what might be broken.

a semi-stupid fix would be to hold it down to where it works, and simply hot glue the mofo down
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post #7 of 11
3/10/08 at 2:11am
I've had the same problem as you for the past 6 months or so.
Your headphone jack is broken. Its soldered onto the motherboard. Months ago I tried to find the part, but failed. I think it was made by foxconn.

You can either buy a brand new motherboard from dell (for what, $300?) or you could grab an external soundcard. I bought a $5 usb sound card off ebay which I'll use until I dump this laptop.
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post #8 of 11
3/10/08 at 10:20am
Thread Starter 
that's what I figured was the issue with it. I told dad, who was rather disappointed. I've taken my old E1705 apart for a CPU upgrade, and have replaced motherboards in an older C600. No problems doing that. But, it works out for me. He's decided to buy a new laptop (a Toshiba I can get at work that normally retails for $800, for $580 as an open-box), and I get his 9300 for doggy-sitting for a few days during my vacation, and doing all the setup and transfer work.

1.73ghz, 1gb RAM, 17" WXGA (LG), 64mb X300, 80gb, DVDDL, 2200BG

I can live with the sound issue, as I already have 3 other laptops, I can just plug speakers into this and use it for a PVR, or set up a Linux box or something.
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post #9 of 11
3/21/08 at 9:11am
There is another option if you have the seperate sound system for it, the 9300 has a coax digital out ability if you use the dell s-video cable for inspirons, part number is 044CTV (check ebay) it's like $7 and well worth it if you're able to use it.

I use this cable just for that purpose, you mute pc speaker and enable spdif in the sound controls and it works great plus digital so the sound is night/day vs. the headphone-rca adapter and much less chance of damage or interference.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it, I ended up using this when my headphone jack busted and I still use this for my sound even after dell fixed my headphone jack mainly because i have it hooked up to my home theater most of the time.
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post #10 of 11
3/25/08 at 11:44am
Thread Starter 
I'm just plugging in speakers. Have no reason to take this laptop around, given that I have the 3 laptops in my sig to use in addition to this 9300.


As it is, I might need a new AC adapter. Occasionally, the power cycles off and on. Pulling the AC adapter, it stops doing it. Could either be the charger, or the motherboard, I won't be able to test that out until I go back to work on the 31st...but my money's on the AC adapter.
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post #11 of 11
3/26/08 at 8:10pm
Probably the charger/AC adaptor. They are known for problems.
One of mine caught fire.
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