I just did this yesterday, what a pain. I’m hearing enough stories online about this and after looking at the connector more closely, in my opinion this is either a design shortcoming or manufacturing defect on certain units. The connector is simply not secured to the motherboard well enough to ensure that the wire disconnects before the connector breaks off.
I believe I did fix it by resoldering the connector ring back to the motherboard using a standard soldering iron (along with two pairs of reading glasses and a magnifying glass.) Seems to be working fine now, although I hope I don’t have to ever disconnect the wire again because I think the ring would pull off again.
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Note that while there are four soldering points on the motherboard I believe that only two are necessary for the actual wifi signal transmission (see picture). The other two are meant to hold the connector ring in place but it looks like there are barbs on the ring which barely penetrate through the plastic separation plate (it ensures the ring doesn’t contact the center pin’s soldering point) and didn’t get enough contact with the soldering pads.
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Note that while there are four soldering points on the motherboard I believe that only two are necessary for the actual wifi signal transmission (see picture). The other two are meant to hold the connector ring in place but it looks like there are barbs on the ring which barely penetrate through the plastic separation plate which ensures the ring doesn’t contact the center pin’s soldering point. Those two barbs didn’t get enough contact with the soldering pads and easily separated when trying to disconnect the wire. At that point it was inevitable that the third more robust soldering point carrying the signal would tear too.
So when I fixed it I made sure the plastic plate was back in place and the ring was connected to the one necessary soldering pad. I also soldered to one of the other pads but trying to get the third seemed like pushing it so I left it unconnected. Put it all back together and so far all of my wireless connections are working great.
I agree this isn’t for the faint of heart, a slip of the iron or something else and the motherboard could be toast. On the other hand, this isn’t rocket science, the connection only has to be as good as plugging any two-wire antenna lead in (coax on your tv for example). I did have the motherboard out of the case while doing this.
I just did this yesterday, what a pain. I’m hearing enough stories online about this and after looking at the connector more closely, in my opinion this is either a design shortcoming or manufacturing defect on certain units. The connector is simply not secured to the motherboard well enough to ensure that the wire disconnects before the connector breaks off.
I believe I did fix it by resoldering the connector ring back to the motherboard using a standard soldering iron (along with two pairs of reading glasses and a magnifying glass.) Seems to be working fine now, although I hope I don’t have to ever disconnect the wire again because I think the ring would pull off again.
Note that while there are four soldering points on the motherboard I believe that only two are necessary for the actual wifi signal transmission (see picture). The other two are meant to hold the connector ring in place but it looks like there are barbs on the ring which barely penetrate through the plastic separation plate (it ensures the ring doesn’t contact the center pin’s soldering point) and didn’t get enough contact with the soldering pads.
So when I fixed it I made sure the plastic plate was back in place and the ring was connected to the one necessary soldering pad. I also soldered to one of the other pads but trying to get the third seemed like pushing it so I left it unconnected. Put it all back together and so far all of my wireless connections are working great.
I agree this isn’t for the faint of heart, a slip of the iron or something else and the motherboard could be toast. On the other hand, this isn’t rocket science, the connection only has to be as good as plugging any two-wire antenna lead in (coax on your tv for example). I did have the motherboard out of the case while doing this.
'''Before:'''
[image|2283336]
'''After:'''
[image|2283337]