[shifuimam]

The problem here is that OS X thinks that an optical audio cable is plugged into my headphone jack. No, the red light isn't on, mostly because I mauled the jack nearly to oblivion trying to get a stuck 3.5mm plug out of the jack. This is a computer I bought used; I was hoping that getting the broken plug out of the jack would be enough for OS X to realize that no, there are no headphones plugged in to the computer. Unfortunately, now it thinks that obnoxious little switch inside the jack is flipped, and I cannot get it to output audio to the internal speakers for the life of me.

I know the speakers work - I get a normal boot chime. I tried some stuff I found online with Audio Hijack Pro, as well as trying some hacked drivers for the Realtek audio chipset that's in these machines. So far, my efforts have been futile.

I'm not averse to modding the jack itself in some way so that OS X quits this whole optical audio nonsense, so my question is this - does anyone know what kind of pinout the jack has? Can I short or otherwise work with the pins directly to make the thing stop thinking it sees an optical audio connection?

If I remove the jack entirely from the logic board, will that fix the problem?

[Waragainstsleep]

No idea about removing it but I never had much luck with this issue and I saw more than a few. Usually the red light was on though. Seems crazy to me that the jack is so tightly sealed. Its impossible to remove broken connectors cleanly and easily.

[shifuimam]

I gave up on a software solution. Had this been Linux or Windows, I probably could have just disabled that audio output; it's kind of annoying that I can't do that in OS X.

Anyhow, we ended up opening up the case and using a little bit of solder to jumper the optical audio switch into the off position. The headphone jack was already unusable, so this should be a permanent (or near-permanent, at the very least) fix.