Adding a Headphone Jack to a Dell Latitude D620 (Pure Insanity)

I've been told that boredom is the mother of invention. I've also been told that idle hands are the devil's workplace. Those concepts may or may not be at all related to the following project. This modification rose out of necessity, the necessity being music, and the mod being the addition of a headphone jack to a laptop. 

The original jack was damaged when my roommate tripped on the cord of my headphones (Sennheiser 515's) which requires a 6.3mm to 3.5mm adapter to be plugged into most headphone jacks. Unfortunately, this resulted in a 4in long column of plastic extending at a right angle to my laptop. The jerk in the (10ft) cord resulted both in a broken adapter, and a broken headphone jack. Even though the jack was repaired to a mostly usable condition, it was still glitchy, and I was eager to replace it. Additionally, I was seconds away from trying (probably disastrously) to overclock my N64, and in a moment of rare (and still questionable) judgement, I decided to perform this modification instead (as it had already been "thought through" before). In all honestly, I did this because 1. I was bored 2. I needed soldering practice 3. I'm a complete idiot.

I'm an idiot for a couple reasons. First off, you don't perform "soldering practice" on a laptop computer. Secondly, a N64 is a lot easier and cheaper to replace than your school laptop. With all that being said, this is what I did. 

First, I started off by dissambling the laptop until the sound system area of the motherboard was exposed. This was somewhat difficult as I had never taken apart a Dell Latitude before. I'm pretty familiar with most Inspiron Models and the new Dell 15's, but this was my first Latitude. 

just going to warn you, this part of the project wasn't very well documented as it basically involved me trying to pry apart the laptop, removing screws as seemed necessary. 

 Never mind, I just remembered the correct order for removing stuff to get at the mobo (motherboard). First, rip the plastic that holds the power and volume control buttons off (above the keyboard).Do this by prying with a small flathead- there should be some obvious tabs and pry-zones on the right side). Then, unscrew the keyboard: it has 3 or 4 screws at the top of it, and then it slides out (towards the screen) and can be lifted out. It does have some ribbon wiring, so be careful not to rip it, go slow, and pry whatever wires are holding it down out of their respective sockets.


Next, remove the screen. should be a couple cables, and 4-6 screws on the backside (portsides) and underside of the laptop. After that, the screen should lift right out, by the hinges. To remove the main cover, unscrew everything on the bottom side (i think there were 2 screws hiding under the hard drive, shich required 2 screws to slide out). Once all of those screws are out, the top cover should slide down (away from the screen) and then lift off.

Pictures not especially related.

 Even though I had not clue which screws needed to be removed or in what order to do all of that (hint: that's not the way I did it the first time) I managed to disassemble the darn thing while only breaking one snap tap (front and center, under the touchpad)

 This image shows my supplemental headphone jack, and both the microphone jack and hold headphone jack (which I removed the shielding off of). If you have no clue what I'm talking about, the new jack is the black plastic box outside the laptop, and the other jacks are the silver (microphone) and black (headphone) jacks immediately to the right. (southwest of the dusty fan)

After much himming and hawing, I determined that the only place to put the new jack in was north of the microphone jack. I didn't want to removed the old one, I'm not a big fan of unsoldering from complex boards (ie:laptops) and i couldn't even get to the solder points on the old jack without lifting the whole mobo out. which i really didn't want to do...

 I then ripped out (literately- with some wire snips and pliers) plastic from the top part of the case so that the new jack would fit in. 

Then, since that went so well, I decided to drill a hole and mock mount the new jack through the top shell, just to make sure everything would fit. -Remember to carefully measure where the hole needs to be, so that when both halves are put back together, everything fits. I totally eyeballed it. Which ended up working out fine, because I have Viking eyes. (I'll explain later) -you should probably measure

I then started soldering some small gauge wire to the contacts on the new headphone jack. I don't know what gauge wire it was. It was just some some stuff I scrounged from a universal charger kit. It was multi-strand and silver, not copper. That's all I remember. 

collar- ground (positive) 

Left side headphone I think (negative)

right side headphone- negative (I think)

 So after that was all done, I needed to get around to the hard part- actually soldering something to the laptop. I wasn't sure exactly what wires needed to be soldered where, so I came up with an idea. Using a male-male 3.5mm cord, I played music into the old headphone jack from my iPod. I then plugged a pair of headphones (which I then wore) into the new jack. This way, not only was I able to determine where to solder the wires, but also determine how good/conductive the solders were (by making sure stereo sound was coming through both headphones, that the volume was equal, no shorts, etc). This idea really saved me a lot of trouble.

This shows the hookup

 I wasn't sure where exactly the wires would end up being attached, so I threw on short lengths of heat shrink tubing onto the right and left side wires, just in case.

First soldered the ground to the top/collar of the old jack

Then poked the wire around until I heard strong sound, then soldered it on.

Same thing for other side

 Ended up looking like this. Sound check proved everything was good.

Except that I was sleep deprived, had eye strain, and was apparently malnourished.

 Then I heated up the heat shrink Tubing with my larger soldering iron.




Then I brought everything back from the workbench in the garage, to my desk (really just the top of my dresser)

crap. lot's of work to do still.

After that, I just put the headphone jack in it's necessary location and jammed the respective wires where I could.

I'm pretty sure you can click on any of these pictures to expand them.

This shows the new jack just north of the microphone jack

Putting the keyboard back in proved difficult because of an elaborate locking mechanism for the ribbon wire (that I accidentally broke) and some random plastic meant to hold the ribbon in place (which I ripped out for looking at me funny). No seriously, that plastic was making it impossible to put the ribbon wire back in, and I ripped it out (again- literately, with some wire snips and pliers)

it might be hard to tell, but that blue plastic on the right and left side of my fingers is made of pure douchebaggery. 

Get mostly everything put together. Booted up the computer to make sure I hadn't ruined everything.

Grooveshark.com

Notice the 2lb bag of Sour Patch Kids

It just so happened that my touchpad mouse wasn't working, so I actually had to re-install the keyboard (I might have actually waited to rip out the offending plastic until then)

Yes, because this is the first picture where you can see it's remains off to the left there.

That plastic was evil.

So that was it. Everything went back together fairly well, except some screws I ruined by crazy-gluing them in place, in order to add stability to Dell's notoriously crappy screen hinges (but that's a story/project for a different day).

Mission: Insane- Completed