acer travelmate 4150 headphone jack

[catch20who]

I broke headphone jack on my notebook (acer travelmate 4150) and now when you jack-in, it sags inward towards the bottom, almost like I broke an internal support on it. It still works if you keep it straight but stops transmitting when it sags.

What I am asking is how to take apart this machine of mine so I can fully diagnose this problem. I've gotten the left-front side up (if you're looking at it form the bottom) but I can't seem to get the side with the optical drive and the ports (usb, firewire, power, etc) to budge. I have a feeling it is the optical drive but I don't think it is removable, so I am not sure what to do.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

c20w

[catch20who]

All right, so I've gotten it open...mostly. The side with the optical drive on it still won't budge, but the rest of the top cover (where the keyboard is) has been removed.

I've inspected the damage and it seems like I will need a completely new headphone line-out port.

Does anyone know how I can remove the entire plate and where I might find a replacement line-out port for sale (other than bumming one from a pc or spare laptop, which I am willing to do granted that they are compatible)?

Thank you.

c20w

[Grim]

Hmm, what makes you say that you need an entire new one?

From what you discribed in your first post, it would seem that its not only the support for the port that has been broken off, but the contacts to the port as well.

I'm guess you could prolly just get a soldering Iron.. and solder back to contacts perhaps...

[catch20who]

kind of a delicate part of the computer, soldering is kind of out of my hands since i don't know how to do that anyway.

[rik]

More than likely if it can be fixed under warranty, they will replace the entire motherboard. Typically this is not a part that is just repaired, unless you want to do it yourself or take a chance on a local shop.