Is there anyway to fix a single socket from a logic board?

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Is there anyway to fix a single socket from a logic board?

Hi,
recently I replaced the airport card on my macbook pro 13" . While doing so, the connector which is attached to the airport ribbon cable came off and stayed connected to the airport socket on the logic board. The mac wouldnt turn on at all for i believe the thing was causing a electric instability of some sort.. I had to remove the connector from the socket manually by tearing it appart in pieces and trying to leave the socket as clean as possible... however... i believe i may have damaged the socket itself...good news is that the mac turns on again!!! (no wifi though 😟 )

The red circles show the parts that are involved in this problem... the socket still has some remains of the connector and I am afraid to keep trying to remove them... I am not quite sure whether i have damaged the scoket itself or not.. there is no way to test this as i cant really connect a new ribbon cable and test... the remains of the old connector are still there as stated... Is there anyway to fix the socket alone without buying a brand new logic board (if damaged)? Do people really do this or do they just replace the entire logic board? Thanks.

Macbook pro 13" late 2011.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Apr 15, 2014 7:19 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 15, 2014 7:25 PM in response to gsaldana10

gsaldana10 wrote:

Do people really do this or do they just replace the entire logic board? Thanks.

If you rolled back time 20+ years, the answer is yes.

Having soldered things for several years and repaired (rather parts replacement mostly) laptops for years...

the answer is no.

soldering micro-connectors is A: absurdly difficult, and B: too easy to burn out neighboring connectors and components.

Is anyone doing it today? No. everything now is 1. remove bad 2. toss bad 3. insert new.

You nor I have the microscopic or robotic skills for such level of soldering/ removal and new component sub-part attachment.

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Answer 2

Apr 15, 2014 7:30 PM in response to gsaldana10

In all likely hood you are looking at a new logic board.

However Apple will diagnose the system for no charge if you can get to an Apple store so they might be able to get the rest of the connector out and test it.

If it was me, as the system works apart from the WiFi, I would just get a USB Wifi adaptor, they are relatively inexpensive

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