by Tomi Engdahl on Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:42 am
The reliable way to repair damaged jack on the sound card is to replace the jack with a new one. You need to find a jack that exactly matches the original (can be hard), then have right tools (soldering iron etc..) and experience on repairing circuit boards. If you can find matching jack and has experience on electronics repair this should be well doable.
One idea: if your soundcard does have some "extra" input/output connector that you don't need (and most propably will not need later) that uses the same type of jack as your damaged one, you can desolder both this "extra" and the damaged one. Then solder the working jack from "extra" to replace the damaged one. When work is done carefully you should have a sound card with working output but one input less..
Some other ideas:
Try to look at the jack on the sound card. There could be some metal part that should make good contact with the plug that is plugged in bent so that it does not make good contact. Look what parts are different shape in this non-working jack than the ones that work. You could try to somehow bend this metal part back to original shape and hope this makes the jack work well again. This could make things work again (at least for some time) or at worst case can break that damaged jack completely.
Hack approach: Buy a new jack that is designed to be attached to the project case. Solder suitable short wires (10 cm or so probably suitable) to it. Solder the other ends of the wires to the solder spots that connect to the original damaged output jack (be careful to know which wire goes to which part). Now test that you get the sound from the new jack. Finally mechanically secure the jack and your wiring (for example drill a new hole to sound card backplane and secure the new jack to it). Now you have a working card with new working jack (use that new jack instead of that old damaged one).
