Classmate ethernet port broken - fix?

Technical Control System
1

Not sure how this happened, but the ethernet port on our Classmate is broken. The connection works if you hold the cable in, but the opposite of what typically happens seems to have happened - the tabs on the ethernet cable have nothing to grab onto in the Classmate, implying that somehow some kind of latch got busted.

Anyone have any experience with this, and know a good fix? Is this the kind of thing that would require us to replace the Classmate? I’m worried that programming will routinely lead to corrupt downloads to the cRIO, which is probably part of the reason we haven’t been able to show that code is on the robot, despite what seems to be a successful deployment via Labview.

Thanks,

-Justin

2

That really stinks :ahh:! One thing you can do is to take apart the classmate and try to make tabs or bend new ones. Dont do this unless you are very confident in your ability to fix it!!!

Second, you can take it to a computer repair shop and i’m sure they can fix it for you. It’s a pretty easy fix but you might need to get a new ethernet card in the process.

After you get it fixed use a small ethernet cable and a female-to-female plug to plug into, while leaving the short piece always connected into your computer. This will reduce wear and tear on the port and the new plug is easily replaceable.

Best of luck!
-Thomas

EDIT: I wouldn’t buy a new classmate it seems to be an easy fix.
Alternatively, you could just jurryrig the plug with tape or zip ties such that its always in the port correctly,
then get a female to female plug for the other end.

3

I saw two teams with the same problem a couple of years ago. The “fix” was to use hot glue to hold a short Ethernet extension cable in place.

4

I’ll second that…

5

we did the hot glue and then after the season tried to fix it, we did fix the enet port and in the process broke the keyboard. we ended up buying a new classmate but ours was 2 years old. be careful

6

As some of the people above have suggested, our team has been using a small Ethernet cable with a female-to-female adapter on one end to remedy this problem. However, instead of hot-gluing it our team has tied it on with a rubber band. Been working fine since '09.

7

We wired a pigtail into ours in 2009 (is that hard wired?).
It made it secure and avoided having to open the case at the time.

We had to open it last year anyway to fix a broken power connector.

8

We broke ours too so we ordered the female to female off the FIRST choice and will be hot glueing it in place. Last year during the competition when I jerked a joystick too hard we came unplugged and couldn’t finish the match…

9

I second/third/"x"th this solution.

Our original Classmate sports the “hot glue ethernet retaining fix.”