Thinkpads Forum

Last weekend, I left my T61 for my little cousin to play with for about an hour, and I just saw today he jammed some sort of wooden stick into both the headphone jack and microphone jack. I got it all out, but now no sound works from the regular speakers because the laptop thinks something is plugged in the headphone jack even when there isn't. I'm guessing the stick bent some contacts in the jack, but from the outside I can't see anything wrong. Can I open up the laptop and solder in a new headphone jack and microphone jack and if so, where can I buy replacements?

That's unfortunate. Sorry to hear that!
I'm not sure about replacing or repairing existing HW for this. No doubt someone could chime in on that.
Personally, I would open it up and get eyes on whatever I could to see what was going on. Maybe it's a simple fix.

However, an incredible solution is to look for the Creative XFi PC card sound card. They are inexpensive now.
It not only gives you much better sound quality and volume, it restores your ability to record stereo line in,
which was taken away some time ago. They have some pretty decent USB sound devices for this as well.

The XFi card has been an excellent addition for our t61. It's a whole new laptop with that card.
But if you use something in the PC card slot, then you should look to a USB device.

Since I don't own a T61, this is just a guess based on what I've seen on other Thinkpad motherboards... You will probably have a hard time removing the headphone/microphone jack assembly as there will be 12 terminals to deal with. It is possible to use a solder sucker on each hole and free up each pin one-at-a-time but you have to be careful that you don't heat up the board too much and end up damaging the traces or through-holes. You might get lucky and find that there's still something in each jack and that you can push it out from behind; assuming that the assembly is not totally enclosed in plastic. You are right. There are contacts inside each jack that are essentially switches. If the ones in the headphone jack are bent out of alignment, it will cut off the speakers.

Are you sure you got it all out? Try a vacuum cleaner, or a condensed air blower.

EAkamai wrote:However, an incredible solution is to look for the Creative XFi PC card sound card. They are inexpensive now.
It not only gives you much better sound quality and volume, it restores your ability to record stereo line in,
which was taken away some time ago.

I can also recommend the Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook for the cardbus slot. I use it in a T61 for digitizing vinyl records. If you search carefully, it can be had for pretty cheap.
Not only does it open up a whole new world of sound possibilities, but it is also well supported in Linux, which was one of my main concerns.

Thanks all for the suggestions. I did finally get it working too. I started a song playing on the computer and was messing around in the headphone jack with a toothpick and when i pushed on one of the contacts, the internal speakers came to life again. I am so relieved that I dont have to even take this new (to me ) system apart.

The jacks are integrated in the motherboard, but with the right equipment and some soldering skills it would probably be possible to transfer the jacks from a dead board to yours... but it certainly wouldn't be an easy task, but glad you got it fixed and hope your jacks are still usable.

In a pinch and as a last resort you could probably just remove the jacks in order to get the internal sound working again, but if you needed it fully restored, it might just be easier to replace the board unless it was one of the rare ones in which case it would be well worth transplanting jacks from another board. If you do find that you need new jacks I could probably find you a dead board to harvest them from.