How to fix a broken I/O board power cable socket?

Question

MacBook Air 11" Mid 2011

1.6 or 1.8 GHz dual-core processor, 2 GB or 4 GB of SDRAM, 64 GB or 128 GB SSD

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Ignaz Reicht @donpromillo

Rep: 37

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Gepost: 7 feb. 2018

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How to fix a broken I/O board power cable socket?

I was following your repair guide MacBook Air 11" Mid 2011 Logic Board Replacement and completely removed the logic board. When installing the new logic board I reached the step 14 to remove the I/O board power cable from its socket. Unfortunately the socket broke off. Is there a way how to connect the cable with the logic board again?

Maybe soldering the cables directly to their target pin? Without proper connection of the socket, the battery cannot charge and the soundcard as well as 1 USB port are disconnected.

Here images of the broken part:

Here the image from your guide at Step_14, how it actually should look like:

What do you think about this strategy?

1) Putting back the socket to its original location:

It still fits :-)

2) Filling the connection gaps by soldering:

Does this make sense?

Any tips on the type of solder?

Beantwoord! Bekijk het antwoord Dit probleem heb ik ook

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Ja Nee

Score 2

5 opmerkingen

Please post a good set of images of both the connector and the logic board where it was. So we can see whats damaged.

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7 feb. 2018 door Dan

Thanks for your reply, images are added to the post.

8 feb. 2018 door Ignaz Reicht

@donpromillo - Do you have two boards? Or, where you putting your original board back?

8 feb. 2018 door Dan

The original board is still with me. So I will try experimenting on that first and will break the I/O socket the same way as it happened on the replacement board. Will post a soldering strategy and hope to get feedback from you if it makes sense.

16 feb. 2018 door Ignaz Reicht

Could you show a vid on soldering? I did the same mistake. Also, can you give me some info on good solders?

25 nov. 2019 door Nicole Rodz

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oldturkey03 @oldturkey03

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Gepost: 18 feb. 2018

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@donpromillo yes, you can solder those for a repair. You could of course also solder small wire jumpers from the board to the connector. You will need to remember so that by soldering the connector it will have no real strength to the board. Careful when you reconnect the I/O board. It would be best of course to replace the complete connector, but I recognize sometimes we just have to fix things with what we got. I'd use regular solderfree 95/5 solder and a chisel tip on my iron. Covering as much of the plastic as possible with some Kapton tape will prevent accidental melting of parts of that.

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Ja Nee

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1 Opmerking:

Yes, you can. And thank you for the idea. Unfortunately I had 2 problems : 1 I had no magnifying devices and the connector I bought for replace was not the same. I did have to melt some of the plastic from the connector to reveal a bit more the little pins. Does not look pretty but it works. I used the cheapest soldering kit from Amazon , I didn't use the chisel because it was too wide but I used a similar tip and soldering wire was really hard to work.

24 okt. 2018 door Isabela

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Please post a good set of images of both the connector and the logic board where it was. So we can see whats damaged.

Voeg afbeeldingen toe aan een bestaande vraag — Dan
@donpromillo - Do you have two boards? Or, where you putting your original board back? — Dan
The original board is still with me. So I will try experimenting on that first and will break the I/O socket the same way as it happened on the replacement board. Will post a soldering strategy and hope to get feedback from you if it makes sense. — Ignaz Reicht
Could you show a vid on soldering? I did the same mistake. Also, can you give me some info on good solders? — Nicole Rodz
Yes, you can. And thank you for the idea. Unfortunately I had 2 problems : 1 I had no magnifying devices and the connector I bought for replace was not the same. I did have to melt some of the plastic from the connector to reveal a bit more the little pins. Does not look pretty but it works. I used the cheapest soldering kit from Amazon , I didn't use the chisel because it was too wide but I used a similar tip and soldering wire was really hard to work. — Isabela

Ignaz Reicht @donpromillo Rep: 37 4 1 · Answer 1 · 2019-08-22T04:29:59-07:00

Somehow I did not manage to solder the pins properly - guess this is due to poor soldering experience and equipment. Therefore a more “boy-scout-ish“ approach is used by tying the pins with a very thin copper-string (one of my copper cables was wired by multiple very thin copper-strings) .

Step 1: Extract the broken pins from the broken onboard socket (do not remove the pins which are still soldered to the mainboard, extract only the pins from the already brocken socket, see picture)

Step 2: Push the extracted pins into the socket of the connector cable (from now on we reference these pushed-in pins as “ pins at the connector cable)

Step 3: Tie the copper string to the pin at the connector cable (tie it like shoelaces (see step 1 on how to tie shoelacet)

Step 4: Repeat Step 3, so you have two knots on the pin at the connector cable

Step 5: Perform Step 3 and Step 4 on all other remaining pins at the connector cable

Step 6: Wrap the loose ends of the remaining copper string (from pin at the connector) around the corresponding pin at the mainboard and fasten it tightly (maybe wrap it around two times)

Step 7: Use hot-glue to glue pin-by-pin (Make sure it is fully covered and no copper string element is standing out and touching other pins)

Tip: Start from right to left, since the right-most two pins are responsible for power-supply, the next two pins (center of socket) for USB and the remaining left-most two pins for audio.

In total I needed to repeat steps 3 - 7 multiple times (3 or 4) to get all pins working again. So far (9 Months) everything is working fine, but I use the macbook air more stationary - I commute with it outside the house maybe once or twice a week. The remaining days I use it inside the house.