X23 -- broken Ultraport = dead USB?

[enchained]

a few months ago I bought a rather battered used X23 (2662-EDU) for my SO to use. It has some physical damage to the plastics at the top of the screen, a chunk is taken out of the plastic around the ultraport and the ultraport cover itself is gone. surprisingly everything on this thing still works fine, with the exception of USB. at the time I just shrugged and bought a cheap cardbus USB controller for it (the computer was *very* cheap due to the damage =P), which works fine, but recently I've been trying to troubleshoot this problem.

The USB ports still show up in windows device manager, 3 of them. I'm assuming the ultraport is really a USB port, since I can only find 2 regular usb ports on the machine. However, if I plug a device into any of the ports windows won't detect it. There's still power to the ports (PDA will still charge from usb, just won't sync). in Linux, i'll get some funky kernel panics if I load the USB drivers -- more specifically, the USB drivers will load fine, but the moment the drivers for something that's on the same irq (cardbus controller, integrated wireless) as the USB try to load, poof it goes. if I don't load the USB drivers, everything else works normally.

I opened up the top of the machine hoping to disconnect the ultraport, which she doesn't use, but it seems to be one piece with the display cable, so I'm not sure what to do with it.

Anyone have any ideas? if i replace the broken plastics will the USB start working again, or is there something else going on here?

[Riddil]

The ultraport really is just a funkified USB connector. I think there is even a connector you can buy which attaches a classic USB port to the ultraport.

I doubt that the ultraport is the root of the failure though. Just b/c it's beat up a little shouldn't hurt functionality.

It sounds more like a communication problem. A component on the south bridge probably got zapped, and now the USB isn't able to communicate with attached devices.

Which if it's true it also explains why even a cardbus USB won't work, since the cardbus controller would still have to pipe through the south bridge.

You can try running PC Doctor (I recommend the DOS version) and see if there are any USB tests. But I'm pretty confident that you're looking at component failure... and would need to replace the mother board to get it working.

[enchained]

er, I didn't explain well. the cardbus USB works fine, only the onboard USB has the problem -- I think you're likely to be right anyway, i've been sitting here for a while trying to figure out how some broken plastic could cause this.

there have been a couple of x23 motherboards on ebay recently for not too terribly much so I may try and pick one up and find out. I've never been in the guts of this machine before but I've taken apart other laptops so I should be able to manage.

anyway, thanks for the help. i'll post back if I figure it out.

[stevech]

Picked one (X23 MB Part number 12P3803) up at EBay 2-3 months ago, was going to see if I can fit it in a totally trashed X20, but decided against it (too much work, the form factor is not an exact fit)). You can have it for $50 plus shipping if you are interested. The MB is brand new IBM refurbished, comes with a little IBM information booklet and nice static plus bubble wrap. For another $35, I can throw in a 256MB PC133 SODIMM that I brought around the same time, for the same purpose. I've been watching prices for these items for a a few months, while what I quoted is not the absolute rock bottom, it's pretty close. LMK.

[enchained]

i'm currently bidding on one, if I lose on it i'll get back to you about this. I don't need the ram, I've already got a 512 in there.