Chosen Solution
WIFI antenna was broken between the connect point of WIFI antenna and the mother board. Is it possible to fix it?
You are very lucky! You should be able to carefully pop off the board connector from the cable then using a fine soldering iron re-attach it. You’ll only get one chance here so you need to be sure you can do this. If not, you should find someone with the tools & skills to do it for you.
Has anyone obtained an estimate for the cost of this repair? Or actually had the repair carried out? If so, what was the actual cost?
I just did this on mine. Hoping to get a repair estimate tomorrow, but WIFI does seem to work without the antenna plate. Perhaps just with diminished range?
I upgraded the Ram to mine and have the same problem. I asked my friend to hold the top part of the computer while the wires were still connected and what clearly upset me was she dropped it with zero care to answer her phone. It wouldn’t make sense undergoing a costly repair if this is an older computer unit like my unsupported mac mini. I’d only seriously use professional help if this is one of the newest up to date models. My recommended resolution is to just buy a USB wifi adapter for less than $20. OR if your wifi router is close enough - use the ethernet port to connect internet directly.
I just did this yesterday, what a pain. I’m hearing enough stories online about this and after looking at the connector more closely, in my opinion this is either a design shortcoming or manufacturing defect on certain units. The connector is simply not secured to the motherboard well enough to ensure that the wire disconnects before the connector breaks off. I believe I did fix it by resoldering the connector ring back to the motherboard using a standard soldering iron (along with two pairs of reading glasses and a magnifying glass.) Seems to be working fine now, although I hope I don’t have to ever disconnect the wire again because I think the ring would pull off again. Note that while there are four soldering points on the motherboard I believe that only two are necessary for the actual wifi signal transmission (see picture). The other two are meant to hold the connector ring in place but it looks like there are barbs on the ring which barely penetrate through the plastic separation plate which ensures the ring doesn’t contact the center pin’s soldering point. Those two barbs didn’t get enough contact with the soldering pads and easily separated when trying to disconnect the wire. At that point it was inevitable that the third more robust soldering point carrying the signal would tear too. So when I fixed it I made sure the plastic plate was back in place and the ring was connected to the one necessary soldering pad. I also soldered to one of the other pads but trying to get the third seemed like pushing it so I left it unconnected. Put it all back together and so far all of my wireless connections are working great. I agree this isn’t for the faint of heart, a slip of the iron or something else and the motherboard could be toast. On the other hand, this isn’t rocket science, the connection only has to be as good as plugging any two-wire antenna lead in (coax on your tv for example). I did have the motherboard out of the case while doing this. Before:
After:
