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JoeyDee · Dec 29, 2005, 06:41 PM

Basicly its a bad ethernet port, the cable has to be lifted upwards with a finger to have a connection, no evidence of physical damage or deformation. The owner doesn't want to pay for a new motherboard, are there any USB ethernet adapters that plug into the USB or firewire port that works with an iBook? I havn't got a clue since im a PC guy to be honest and I cant seem to find anything regarding it on google... Please help, thanks in advance for those who help

jaydon34 · Dec 29, 2005, 07:26 PM

pop a wifi card in and set up a wireless network its that easy.

mduell · Dec 29, 2005, 07:58 PM

Yes, there are wired and wireless USB ethernet adapters.

seanc · Dec 30, 2005, 07:33 AM

Have you tried another ethernet cable?
My iBook 500 does the same thing with one of my ethernet cables - I did't make that cable very well

JoeyDee · Dec 30, 2005, 10:57 AM

well, I would do the wifi, but she needs the wired connection for school and work, can you give me a brand name for a usb-ethernet adapter? All the ones i found online all had windows drivers and not mac... And its not the cable because it does the same thing for all my cables.... Thanks for the replies guys

ghporter · Dec 30, 2005, 11:09 AM

Typically this sort of problem happens when the contacts in the jack get dislodged. If you look into the jack, are the wire pins all parallel and do they sit at an angle toward the rear/center of the connector? Sometimes these wires get bumped out of their slots and don't bend back down to make contact with the cable connector. You can fix it fairly easily by simply prodding the wire back into its proper channel-use a flat toothpick or some other nonconductive device, and do it while the computer is off.

If this doesn't work, go with a USB ethernet adapter. Search on "usb ethernet macintosh" to find products that support your Mac.

JoeyDee · Dec 30, 2005, 03:49 PM

Its not the pins, its the peices of metal on the sides of the port that push the plug down onto the pins, theres nothing i could do except have the motherboard replaced, which i dont want to do, so USB it is i guess. The problem is that I've been searching for usb ethernet adapters for macs and cant find any wired ones, i see on occasional wifi adapter but not wired... I see lots of ones for PC, but not mac...

kholdstare101 · Dec 30, 2005, 04:29 PM

give this a go http://www.sustworks.com/site/news_usb_ethernet.html

ghporter · Dec 30, 2005, 05:21 PM

Originally Posted by JoeyDee

Its not the pins, its the peices of metal on the sides of the port that push the plug down onto the pins...

Which iBook do you have? On our iBook G4's ethernet port there are 8 gold wires that stick up (not down as I said earlier) from the open end to the back center of the jack. These are the pins, and they need to sit in the slots in the ethernet plug that goes into the jack. There are no metal parts in the top of the jack; it's all plastic. Further, what pushes the plug down is the tab on the plug itself.

You said that if you push in the plug and hold it downward, you can get it to work, right? It sounds very much like just a tab or pin issue. Can you post a picture of the jack?

JoeyDee · Jan 3, 2006, 11:53 AM

I can't give you a picture but I might be able to describe it better. Imagine a side view of the port, a rectangle with the open end on the left side which is where the plug would be inserted, the plug being the shape of a prism should seat completely flat ontop the bottom right of the rectangle so that the right of the plug and the bottom are completely flat against 2 sides of the rectangle, on the bottom right corner is where the pins on the rectagle (the port) are and the plug will be pushing against them and it all workd, thats how it SHOULD be, the problem is that imagine the left side of the plug, that sticks outside of the laptop (the end that isn't intside the port) is actually sinking downwards because of the wieght of the cord and that there seems to me nothing inside the port preventing this "lever" effect, one side goes down, the other side goes up, and when the other side goes up, it doesn't touch the pins anymore.

Maybe thats a better describtion, albeit an odd one...hehe

ghporter · Jan 3, 2006, 02:46 PM

Is this the way your connector looks, including the up/down orientation?:

That would mean you have a clamshell iBook, right? With a computer that's that old, it could be that the pins are no longer springy enough to make contact properly-they don't pop up as far or as strongly as they should, thus not touching the jack's contacts.

I'm just trying to confirm what's wrong with the jack here...

One thing I've seen work quite well is to roll some light cardboard and use that to wedge the locking tab away from the plug body, forcing it into the locking slot and forcing the rest of the plug down against the pins.

JoeyDee · Jan 6, 2006, 10:43 AM

Its not a clamshell shape, its white with a G3 running Jaguar. The pins are completely fine, they're in their highest position but thats not the problem. An every other computer have when the cat5 cord is plugged into the port, it feels firm, with this iBook it feels loose and hangs downwards because of the weight of the cord which cancels the connection. I've already tried multiple wedging techniques and none helped.

I think a usb Ethernet adapter is the way to go, i bought a Linksys USB200m and tried the driver linked above but I guess the driver doesn't work with jaguar. Can anyone give me a URL to a website that sells USB adapters that come with Mac drivers? I havn't had much luck finding any except a couple that were designed for travel and VERY overpriced ($80)

Thanks for the help guys

sjohnson615 · Jan 12, 2006, 07:30 AM

Originally Posted by JoeyDee

Its not a clamshell shape, its white with a G3 running Jaguar. The pins are completely fine, they're in their highest position but thats not the problem. An every other computer have when the cat5 cord is plugged into the port, it feels firm, with this iBook it feels loose and hangs downwards because of the weight of the cord which cancels the connection. I've already tried multiple wedging techniques and none helped.

I think a usb Ethernet adapter is the way to go, i bought a Linksys USB200m and tried the driver linked above but I guess the driver doesn't work with jaguar. Can anyone give me a URL to a website that sells USB adapters that come with Mac drivers? I havn't had much luck finding any except a couple that were designed for travel and VERY overpriced ($80)

Thanks for the help guys

My 1.5 Gig G4 Powerbook just had the SAME exact problem. I mean you described it perfectly! Luckily I was still under the initial Applecare and sent it in and according to the genius at the bar they replaced the logic board. Why they had to replace the logic board for just a problem with the ethernet port, I'll never know, but they did! So just a little FYI on what your problem might be according to Apple.