Inspect both sides of the motherboard for any liquid damage, corrosion, wet areas, etc…Īlso, inspect the MagSafe Board (power connector board).Įven a minor corrosion can affect the functionality of the computer.Ĭlean up any liquid damage/corrosion using a toothbrush and isopropyl alcohol. There is not much you can do to clean them up inside. The keyboard and trackpad a sealed units. iFixit has some great teardown guides.Īfter the motherboard is removed, insect all remaining internal components (DVD drive, trackpad, area under the motherboard, etc…).
You will find many instructions on the Internet explaining how to remove the motherboard from MBPs. If laptop repair fails, later you can transfer data into new Mac. If it is wet, wipe is clean and let it dry thoroughly before turning on. Remove the hard drive and take a look at the controller board on the bottom side of the drive. If the battery is wet, wipe it clean with a soft cloth. The sooner you disconnect the battery after liquid spill, the better. Remove the bottom cover, disconnect and remove the battery. Make sure you have all necessary screwdrivers before you start: Phillips #0, Torx T6, Try-wing and Pentalobe P5 (if you are fixing a MacBook Air). Do not try to turn it on! It has to be disassembled for liquid damage inspection. VERY IMPORTANT: After you spilled something on your laptop turn it off right away.
In the following example I am working with a MacBook Pro 13-inch but all following steps will be the same for all MBPs. :) They also could be exactly the same, I don't know.Not all liquid spills can be repaired but if you do everything correctly there is a good chance to get your computer back to life. The macbook pros may be slightly different, but you can figure it out with a connectivity meter and some fiddling maybe. NOTE: This is one a late 2008, a1278 MacBook unibody. Below is an imgur link to a couple photos I took of the area and connections to jump. You do need a decent sodlering iron to do this and you must make sure you have a very small gauge wire (insulated). Computer Engineering student, I didn't just do this all willy-nilly out of the blue, haha. This fix is fine for me, especially since I had no other option b/c I'm out of warranty and I'm not spending $400 on a new logic board haha.īTW, I'm a Ph.D. This is b/c the switch is basically bypassed, the macbook will never know whether there is a headphone plugged in to the jack or not.
After doing so, the headphone jack will not work as an audio output for either analog or optical, but the internal speakers will work fine. While doing so, I found that you can jump two connections (one is sleeve ground and the other I believe is a connection from the switch inside the jack. I reverse-engineered the connections I could access from the bottom of the PCB under the audio jack. So, I took it apart to get a look at the logic bord. Toothpick trick did not work for me, or anything similar. As a bonus, it fits into the little plastic clip on the MagSafe cable so it is always handy. But I settled on a piece of nail, snipped down to an inch and filed slightly rounded. The shank end of a 1/8" drill bit works well, and burying the business end in a bottle cork prevents it from cutting you (it is sharp). There is no problem using metal, even powered on, because headphone circuitry supplies no power and is protected against short circuits and static electricity. What works for me 100% of the time is inserting a 1/8" metal rod all the way and then dragging it out while applying moderate pressure in the 9 o'clock direction (towards the MagSafe connector). Jostling it with things like air, suction, Q-Tips, toothpicks, ballpoint pen inserts works for some, but not for me. Tugging on it with a bent-tipped safety pin while watching through a magnifying glass works, but only until the next time I unplug the headphones, and so is too impractical. The one plaguing my Late 2006 MacBook is the tip contact. Staring into the glowing red Cylon eye, they are: 2 "sleeve" contacts (nearest you), one at 9 o'clock and one at 3 o'clock (positions on an imaginary 12-hour analog clock dial) 1 "ring" contact (farther in) at 12 o'clock and 1 "tip" contact (all the way in) also at 3 o'clock. The Apple 3.5mm headphone jack may have multiple different failure modes, since it contains 4 equally flimsy electrical contacts.