Help needed for Inspiron 9300 - 5 year old laptop

Hi everyone

I have a 5 year old Inspiron 9300/80 Gig/one gig/1080p screen.

I have been having problems with its earphone/microphone slot. I took it to a service center and had it repaired but now due to constant usage ( my wife works from home and her input is dictation sound files, she plugs and unplugs many times a day), the slots have issues and infact have broken and there is a empty big hole in their place.

I dont want to spend any more money fixing the 3.5MM headphone/microphone jacks and was wondering whether I can use the USB slot instead to get sound out from my laptop and also as an input for a microphone. Hence please advice me if such breakages of the earphone and headphone slots indicate any permanent damage to the sound card where in I cannot get sound even out from the USB slots.

Also please note the other reason for constant usage of the 3.5mm headphone slot is because the inbuilt speaker doesnt work and hence we have to rely on headphones or speakers all the time.

If your answer is that yes - we can use the USB slot to get sound out of the laptop, then I will buy speakers that have an USB input and hopefully by getting a webcam with a built in mic that again plugs through USB, I can get around the absence of a microphone jack as well.

Please help me out as this laptop being so old is of not much use, but it still has a gorgeious 17inch 1080p output and hence I dont want to get rid of of it.

thanks in advance for all your help!!

 

Inspiron 9300 should have a WUXGA screen (1920x1200).

In any case, yes a USB adapter to 3.5mm should work just fine. The jacks are just soldered onto the motherboard, doubt you damaged your internal sound chip.

 

THANK YOU VERY MUCH