philcud wrote:

The distortion is at its worst when the power supply is disconnected
from the laptop, with the laptop running purely on battery power - the
distortion sounds like an earth problem, but very, very loud, totally
overpowering any signal.

That suggests a serious degree of ****edness.


with the power supply attached it has a high pitched 'cricket' type
distortion that changes depending on what the computer is doing (ie if
i load the processor it changes).

lastly, if i 'half' remove the power lead from the laptop, such that
the laptop tells me that it is not receiving any power from the lead,
but the lead is still halfway in the socket (maybe earthing?) there is
no distortion to the signal whatsover.

Possibly the crap mini jack has lost its earth connection to the pcb. God I
LOATHE those abortions of connectors.

Graham