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Step 1: Tools Required
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1. A precision screwdriver - make sure it's smaller enough,
because you don't want to round off the screws.
2. A thin tipped Soldering iron - i bought mine for $7.99 @ radioshack.
Mine's a 30 Watt and about 9 inches long. I don't know a lot about soldering,
i'd say the smaller the better.
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Step 2a: Opening the Nomad
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There it is intact
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Step 2b: Taking the Cover Off
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Slide the grey spring catch to pop the front over off. Also, take the battery out.
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Step 2c: Removing the back cover
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Using your little screwdriver, unscrew the small screws at the bottom of the unit
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Step 2d: Removing the bottom side
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Unscrew the screws in the bottom left and right corners and gently lift out the plastic assembly
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Step 2e: Remove the Chassis
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Unscrew the 4 screws on the front of the unit
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Step 2f: Removing the guts
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CAREFULLY lift the harddrive and circuit board out of the chassis. Don't force anything. If it's not coming out easily, apply a small amount of pressure to the hard drive. Be careful not to lose the gold springs or the back button.
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Step 3: Examining the headphone jack
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A stereo plug has 3 parts: Left Right and Ground. The contact point for ground is the on closest to the edge of the board, Right is in the middle of the jack, and left (the one most likely to need repairs) is practically under the LCD screen. NOTE: my Nomad had a white strip of sticky paper covering the left channel solder point, i carefully loosened it with a straight pin and snipped it with scissors when it was free. You can see remnants of it in the picture.
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Here's a pretty good picture of the jack and the right channel solder point
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The headphone jack is attached to the board with (mostly invisible) surface tabs. In my case these tab seemed pretty impossible to repair, the left channel tab was most likely severed completely. I use Grado headphones, and the long input jack probably put a lot of extra pressure on the jack.
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Step 4: Doing the repair
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The trick to repairing the left side is to solder a wire from the gold "left" contact on the jack to the left channel solder point. CAUTION: keep your soldering iron away from the copper strip to the right of the headphone jack. I'm fairly sure this is part of the Xtra's backlight. As far as i know, I am the first person to repair the jack without losing the backlight. You must constantly pay attention to what your iron is touching because if it touches that copper strip, it will begin to melt it.
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You can see in this picture i damaged the copper a little bit. It is no big deal if it happens a little bit, but BE CAREFUL. Also, make sure the solder you use on the left point doesn't touch the solder connecting the copper bit to the board. If this happens your sound will not work. You'll need to carefully melt the offending bits of solder away, being careful not to touch the copper part.
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And that's it! This is a good fix because it takes the pressure off the solder point. I hope this helps the community. Like many users, i was furious when i first lost the left channel, but if you are patient and very careful, stereo sound can be fully restored.
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