red light in headphone jack on macbook

[Rosco]

I did some searching on here could not find anything.

Macbook late 2008
duo core 2 2.4ghz
6gb of 1333 ddr3 ram
geforce 9400m 256mb
Yosemite 10.10.1

Issue:

A client gave me the macbook. She had gotten it on ebay a few months ago. It is now outside the sellers warranty.

The issue is there is no sound inside OSX unless you plug in headphones/speakers. There is the chime at start up. If you plug in headphone when you remove them there is a red light inside the port. there is no option in sound preferences to select internal speakers.

After some research it seems like it is happening because there is a switch/latch inside the 3.5 headphone port askew. I have tried some of the solutions around the internet to no avail.

I am wondering if anyone else has come across this and has the answer. Any help would be appreciated!

The ebay seller had them upgrade to Yosemite to fix the problem.(obviously that did not work)

 

[joydivision]

The red light is the laser for the optical digital output a lot of headphone sockets double up as that, there is no sound because it thinks you want to bypass the internal sound card's DAC.

If you google how to turn off digital optical output on that mac it might help.

 

[Rosco]

From what i got gather.(about 1.5 hours of googling) there is no off setting for digital out. Lots of people talk about sticking a toothpick into it to trip the switch manually. Or deleting a audio preference or resetting the pram. nothing works. It is a very frustrating problem.

 

[Markverhyden]

So if you go to System Preferences>Sound>Output you do NOT see Internal Speakers/Built In?

 

[Rosco]

So if you go to System Preferences>Sound>Output you do NOT see Internal Speakers/Built In?

Right this was the first thing i looked at. It only has digital out. When you plug in headphones it shows up and audio works fine.

I does chimp at startup from the internal speaker though.

 

[cyabro]

Boot off a USB drive with osx on it and see if it has the same issue.

 

[Rosco]

Boot off a USB drive with osx on it and see if it has the same issue.

How would i do that?

 

[Markverhyden]

How would i do that?

check your pm's

 

[anti]

Replace the jack or the board.

 

[Rosco]

SO with a lot of trail and error i know that the speakers work. I can hear short bursts of sound from the internal speakers when i momentary move the contact on the inside of the jack. As soon as i move the pin sound goes off. How to i get the contact out of the way? or disable the optical out through some software solution?

 

[Markverhyden]

Here is the link to the service manual if you do not already have it.

http://verhyden.org/owncloud/public.php?service=files&t=c427fd8c9622cb4d1cbbf5e6b792f09d

 

[citizensmith]

Here is the link to the service manual

Thanks for sharing. +Rep