A Toughbook with a little

Sound problem (front - in)
(oops sorry, the title went wrong)

Hello everybody,

My toughbook is a beautiful girl, she went through many, many adventures with me, and always came out clean (well left a little piece of plastic on the road, but still, some transparent tape, et voilà). Man, that's a beautiful piece of hardware.

But for a couple month now, the sound is getting worse and worse. That wouldn't be a problem if there was a jack in the back - but there's none, just the one in the front. Problem is that it seems broken to me now, as any speaker/headphone connected to it will invariably produce a lot of jammed and weird noise. I can still cheat with the headphones, adding some weight on the jack itself to make a better connexion, but that's really not top notch. I fear my sound connexion hardware just can't take it anymore, and may need tweaking or fixing.

Because I am not really good at dealing with notebooks, I'd like to hear your opinions about my options. Being in China right now (but I didn't buy it there), I don't feel safe giving the bird to anyone either, and I wondered if you had any proposal (like a bigger/safer/support plug for instance where I'd could put the headphone jack?) that may actually turn it back to normal without having to ask a random person to open it for me.

What would you do if you were me?

Thanks in advance

 

Pickup pcmcia sound card. I imagine they are cheap in China. Usb would also work, but pcmcia is less prone to sticking out and being broken. Use the pcmcia/usb card and turn the onboard sound off.

 

Sure -

Get one of these and plug it into a USB port; then plug your headphones into that.

Search on fleaBay for usb sound adapter and you'll find THOUSANDS of them for only a few dollars.

mnem
*Presses the EASY button for ya*

 

Thx mates. I'll give that a try.
But geez those PCMCIA aren't cheap out there, I'll check in China, but if it's way cheaper, it may be crappy. I will probably go for the USB option first to give it a try, if I am not too rough handling it it should be ok (hopefully...)

 

You can also try these:

eCOST.com - Logitech Premium USB Headset 350 w/ Microphone - 980374-0403

They're right cheap at eCost.com; dunno if you can find them where you're at now. Manual says they ARE Stereo (see step 3).

http://logitech-en-amr.custhelp.com/ci/fattach/get/28668/

mnem
USB-ity.

 

USB-2-0-MIC-Speaker-5-1-Audio-Sound-Card-Adapter-

 

Fishbed
That sounds like my 51 Mk3 when I first got it. The headphone jack was broken, but I was able to bend the contacts back to some form of correctness and carefully glue the plastic bits back.
What model Toughbook do you have? That might help us 'armchair repair' yours.

 

You do realize, don't you, that the ID you picked for your Forum ID is the NATO designation for the Russian MiG 21 Fighter-Interceptor?

 

Thanks mate, I went for the USB soundcard finally

TopCop: yes, I do realize, it's not like it was a common and logical association to ever exist out of this context I guess

 

Another thing to try is to insert and remove a headphone plug numerous times into the jack. It looks like you have some corrosion built up between the contacts in the jack. If you can find some contact cleaner, you can spray some of that into the jack and repeat inserting and removing a headphone plug numerous or many times. DO NOT SPRAY ANYTHING INTO THE JACK WITH POWER APPLIED!!!!!!!. Turn off the toughbook, remove the power plug AND the battery.