It's one of those shitty slim ethernet ports with a mouth/hinge that opens to fit the ethernet plug in an unstable fashion. It was fiddly for months and when it completely stopped working I noticed one of the wires inside came off at very near the base.
Am I right to assume this port is now 100% dead and not restorable? It is soldered onto my laptop's MoBo, isn't it?
What are my options here?
Should I buy some kind of usb-to-ethernet-port adapter?
Right now I'm using a usb wireless netwok card (built-in wifi card sucks), but I'm sometimes getting lag spikes or even disconnects. I might be paranoid but I think it has to do with usb port usage among my other ports (have 2x usb 2.0 and 2x usb 3.0). I have made sure in Windows 10 to keep power at 100% all the time and disable all power saving for usb, network card, win power options.
I would get a Powered USB-3.0 HUB, with a Gigabit Ethernet USB-3.0 dongle.
The port in question (if it is what I think it is) may be replaced. But it would require removal and attachment of a new one. (depending on how it's connected)
Some of them, it's a little module that is connected via a small ribbon cable.
In its current state, yup, RIP ethernet port, however, it is completely repairable, and shouldn't take more than an hour to repair, even if you're a noobie.
That's using a pinhole (through hole) design for keeping the ethernet jack on the board, which is good. It makes it easier to remove.
Anyway, if you're into electronics and fixing that, all you're going to need is a solder sucker OR solderwick + flux. The solderwick + flux works better, but will be messier. Either one that you choose would cost less than $10 from EBay. You'll also need solder (for adding new jack), the new jack (obviously) and of course, a soldering iron.
Keep in mind, however, that you'll need an ethernet jack which is identical/very similar to the one currently on that logicboard. That may be a bit hard to find.
If you're not into that sort of thing, Qain's idea definitely works really well.
this might work as a replacement? The part that is in there right now is kind of weird because it's designed to have half above the pcb and half below.
I can only speak from experience with Dell Latitude Notebooks, specifically the E6440, E5440, and E6430, but the pins inside the ethernet port itself on those are literally just sitting in there (as far as we can tell, they are held in by tension and nothing more)
We get a lot of them where I work, that have bent pins. Occasionally when we try to straighten them out a bit (so that they make proper contact with the connectors on the ethernet cable we use to image the notebooks) one will come out of the little slot it sits in. When this happens, we try to get the pin back in there, but usually it doesn't work (mainly because we just can't get it into the slot), however if we do manage to get it back into the slot, it will actually function.
Your experience may differ, I would say try it, because it's already broken and you can't really make it worse? shrug
Interesting. Well as soon as I find one of these ports:
I will try to unsolder / resolder. I did soldering before just not on motherboards :) It looks manageable tho.
It is. Good eye. I didn't even know Acer had such unique PCBs that one would be able to tell.
I'll get a magnifying glass and some tweezers. But I'd also need to find a piece of wire to match.
The thing is I really hate this hinged ethernet port idea. The little mouth with the spring is never very stable. I wish I could just mod in a regular ethernet port.
