[Samuel_M]

Hello:

First time visiting the site. I hope someone can help me out.

I have a powerbook G3 Wall Street Edition made in 1998 (I think) 233mhz, 192mb 12" 2GB.

In the past several months, my headphone jack on the back of my laptop has progressively gotten loose, so loose in fact that sound was fadin' in and out. A search online revealed that many other users were having the same issues and some suggested wedging a small toothpick to rectify the problem. That was workin' for a few months until this evening....

I was puttin' the end of the toothpick in there, and the next thing I know the entire jack just breaks off! The funny thing is I wasn't even applying a lot of force. So now I can't get any sound whatsoever.

With that said, I have two questions:

1) What are my options as far as gettin' this fixed. Is gettin' this resaudered an option or would I have to replace the entire Sound/Video board? (I checked online and $300 seemed to be the going rate, yikes!).

2) Does the broken piece (sound jack) that is inside pose any problems to the other hardware inside? Should I be concerned about my computer having a meltdown?

Forgive me if these issues have been discussed here before, but as a newbie, I would really welcome your thoughts on this. Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearin' back from someone soon.

[jasong]

I wouldn't worry too much about the piece causing havok. Maybe try opening the laptop (take the keyboard off) and shake it around and see if it comes out.

As far as fixing it, given the age of the laptop, it isn't really worth it to fix it. I would recommend getting the Griffin Technologies iMic, which is a small USB sound card. It is driverless under OS X (and has a control panel for OS 9), and works great. It cost $30 about 2 years ago, so it might be less now. I eventually bit the bullet and have the sound card on my Pismo replaced, but the iMic was a great solution.

-- Jason

[swsteckly]

The wallstreet doesn't have USB.

If you know how to take your machine apart and are willing to experiment, it could be possible to resolder it. The jack itself may be broken, in which case it wouldn't work. It probably wouldn't be worth it to fix, I don't think that the Wallstreet is worth that much any more.

Good luck in finding a solution. Maybe try sending it to Apple service for an estimate, or taking it to a local Apple-Authorized Service Provider. Most places offer a free estimate, so they might be able to do something other than replace the whole board.

[Appleman]

In case of problems with a PowerBook, www.pbparts.com really can be interesting as they have all these things that can break off, and for reasonable prices.

Taking into consideration the age of your book, it isn't worth spending 300 dollar on such a non-trival (?) aspect.