Winman486 wrote on 2022-05-07, 23:49:

I have an Inspiron 8200 that has been very finicky first of all I can't get the onboard speakers to work but the headphone jack works I have reseated the connectors for it and still nothing and it seems none of the pins in the headphone jack are bent.

Don't bother fiddling with the headphone jack, it's not at fault. The speakers are blown.

I have 4 FOUR bloody inspiron 8200's and 2 8100's, all purchased for the same reason - SPEAKERS. Why? I bought a mint condition Inspiron 8200 - and I mean MINT, not a scratch or mark on it - and it's a lovely little retro laptop. Dedicated swappable video card, fast pentium mobile CPU, great screen with decent scaling. But the speakers wouldn't work. So just like you I suspected the headphone jack - then the drivers - then the sound module - replaced everything until I decided to try testing the speakers and discovered they were blown.

So I started looking for more inspiron 8000/8100/8200 laptops to harvest speakers off of. That's how I ended up with 6 laptops.... and no working speakers on any of them. The nice part is I now have Geforce 2 GO, Geforce 4 GO, Radeon Mobility 7500 and Radeon mobility 9000 graphics cards - all working, harvested from these various laptops. Lots of sound modules too. But no working speakers.

What I ended up doing is de-solder the leads from the original speakers and testing out various laptop speakers I found in my pile'o'dead laptops. I ended up modifying and installing a set of Sony Vaio speakers, and I now have a fully working Inspiron 8200 laptop. Only took me 1 and a half years.

tl;dr - don't bother trying to find working speakers for the 8000 series. They're all blown. I read someware the speakers on the 8500 don't have this issue and they fit in the 8000/8100/8200 case without mods, but I haven't tried it myself.

Sometimes it is the phono jack switches not closing when phono plug unplugged. I rarely see that too on some iphone saying phono mode when I adjust the volume.

Use your multimeter to check conductivity of your speakers, they should be no more than 32 ohms or less.

Cheers,

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-08, 19:10:

Don't bother fiddling with the headphone jack, it's not at fault. The speakers are blown. […]
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Winman486 wrote on 2022-05-07, 23:49:

I have an Inspiron 8200 that has been very finicky first of all I can't get the onboard speakers to work but the headphone jack works I have reseated the connectors for it and still nothing and it seems none of the pins in the headphone jack are bent.

Don't bother fiddling with the headphone jack, it's not at fault. The speakers are blown.

I have 4 FOUR bloody inspiron 8200's and 2 8100's, all purchased for the same reason - SPEAKERS. Why? I bought a mint condition Inspiron 8200 - and I mean MINT, not a scratch or mark on it - and it's a lovely little retro laptop. Dedicated swappable video card, fast pentium mobile CPU, great screen with decent scaling. But the speakers wouldn't work. So just like you I suspected the headphone jack - then the drivers - then the sound module - replaced everything until I decided to try testing the speakers and discovered they were blown.

So I started looking for more inspiron 8000/8100/8200 laptops to harvest speakers off of. That's how I ended up with 6 laptops.... and no working speakers on any of them. The nice part is I now have Geforce 2 GO, Geforce 4 GO, Radeon Mobility 7500 and Radeon mobility 9000 graphics cards - all working, harvested from these various laptops. Lots of sound modules too. But no working speakers.

What I ended up doing is de-solder the leads from the original speakers and testing out various laptop speakers I found in my pile'o'dead laptops. I ended up modifying and installing a set of Sony Vaio speakers, and I now have a fully working Inspiron 8200 laptop. Only took me 1 and a half years.

tl;dr - don't bother trying to find working speakers for the 8000 series. They're all blown. I read someware the speakers on the 8500 don't have this issue and they fit in the 8000/8100/8200 case without mods, but I haven't tried it myself.

Does your onboard ethernet work??

Winman486 wrote on 2022-05-09, 07:33:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-08, 19:10:

Don't bother fiddling with the headphone jack, it's not at fault. The speakers are blown. […]
Show full quote

Winman486 wrote on 2022-05-07, 23:49:

I have an Inspiron 8200 that has been very finicky first of all I can't get the onboard speakers to work but the headphone jack works I have reseated the connectors for it and still nothing and it seems none of the pins in the headphone jack are bent.

Don't bother fiddling with the headphone jack, it's not at fault. The speakers are blown.

I have 4 FOUR bloody inspiron 8200's and 2 8100's, all purchased for the same reason - SPEAKERS. Why? I bought a mint condition Inspiron 8200 - and I mean MINT, not a scratch or mark on it - and it's a lovely little retro laptop. Dedicated swappable video card, fast pentium mobile CPU, great screen with decent scaling. But the speakers wouldn't work. So just like you I suspected the headphone jack - then the drivers - then the sound module - replaced everything until I decided to try testing the speakers and discovered they were blown.

So I started looking for more inspiron 8000/8100/8200 laptops to harvest speakers off of. That's how I ended up with 6 laptops.... and no working speakers on any of them. The nice part is I now have Geforce 2 GO, Geforce 4 GO, Radeon Mobility 7500 and Radeon mobility 9000 graphics cards - all working, harvested from these various laptops. Lots of sound modules too. But no working speakers.

What I ended up doing is de-solder the leads from the original speakers and testing out various laptop speakers I found in my pile'o'dead laptops. I ended up modifying and installing a set of Sony Vaio speakers, and I now have a fully working Inspiron 8200 laptop. Only took me 1 and a half years.

tl;dr - don't bother trying to find working speakers for the 8000 series. They're all blown. I read someware the speakers on the 8500 don't have this issue and they fit in the 8000/8100/8200 case without mods, but I haven't tried it myself.

Does your onboard ethernet work??

it works on all but one of them

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-09, 08:26:

Winman486 wrote on 2022-05-09, 07:33:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-08, 19:10:

Don't bother fiddling with the headphone jack, it's not at fault. The speakers are blown. […]
Show full quote

Don't bother fiddling with the headphone jack, it's not at fault. The speakers are blown.

I have 4 FOUR bloody inspiron 8200's and 2 8100's, all purchased for the same reason - SPEAKERS. Why? I bought a mint condition Inspiron 8200 - and I mean MINT, not a scratch or mark on it - and it's a lovely little retro laptop. Dedicated swappable video card, fast pentium mobile CPU, great screen with decent scaling. But the speakers wouldn't work. So just like you I suspected the headphone jack - then the drivers - then the sound module - replaced everything until I decided to try testing the speakers and discovered they were blown.

So I started looking for more inspiron 8000/8100/8200 laptops to harvest speakers off of. That's how I ended up with 6 laptops.... and no working speakers on any of them. The nice part is I now have Geforce 2 GO, Geforce 4 GO, Radeon Mobility 7500 and Radeon mobility 9000 graphics cards - all working, harvested from these various laptops. Lots of sound modules too. But no working speakers.

What I ended up doing is de-solder the leads from the original speakers and testing out various laptop speakers I found in my pile'o'dead laptops. I ended up modifying and installing a set of Sony Vaio speakers, and I now have a fully working Inspiron 8200 laptop. Only took me 1 and a half years.

tl;dr - don't bother trying to find working speakers for the 8000 series. They're all blown. I read someware the speakers on the 8500 don't have this issue and they fit in the 8000/8100/8200 case without mods, but I haven't tried it myself.

Does your onboard ethernet work??

it works on all but one of them

Wonderful and I assume it's the same issue I am having? I am starting to think this thing is not worth the trouble.

Winman486 wrote on 2022-05-09, 19:02:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-09, 08:26:

Winman486 wrote on 2022-05-09, 07:33:

Does your onboard ethernet work??

it works on all but one of them

Wonderful and I assume it's the same issue I am having? I am starting to think this thing is not worth the trouble.

I haven't investigated further. On board lan on the one I'm using works fine.

I'd say the 8200 is worth the trouble - but that's just my opinion. The reasons are:

- Modular design. The sound card and video card are separate daughter boards. That means you have your choice of video cards (gf 2 go, gf 4 go, radeon 7500, radeon 9000) and sound cards (ESS or Crystal). This also means that if the video card goes you can replace it with one off another laptop or ebay. Just google "inspiron 8200 video card". Your choice is not limited to the inspiron line, as some laptops from the latitude series use the same video card daughterboard - ex the latitude C840.

This is a radeon 9000m module with 64Mb of 128bit DDR VRAM:

- DOS compatible sound chips - the Inspiron line comes with the ESS Solo audio chip witch you can get working in dos. Some models, including the hardware compatible latitude line come with a daughterboard that fits the inspiron line and use a Crystal sound codec that again has working DOS drivers - although I've had much better luck with the ESS.

- Pentium 4 Mobile - this CPU supports speedstep - it can be clocked down using software.

If you like thinkering, it's worth having a go at this laptop. Once sorted it makes a great portable gaming PC. If you want something that just works, then don't bother and pick up an IBM T40 or R50, or better yet an HP NC6000 or Compaq N800....