Followup: New , to me, MBP in the house, but ...

[Buzz]

Bake in oven? No cheese!
==

[nwyaker]

Buzz wrote:
Bake in oven? No cheese!
==

But ... love cheese !

[JoeH]

If not water damage or bad solder joint, the problem could be from a card being inserted forcibly upside down. Have seen that happen to a few card readers we lend at the library, some people will just use force without actually looking at why something is not going in.

[nwyaker]

JoeH wrote:
If not water damage or bad solder joint, the problem could be from a card being inserted forcibly upside down. Have seen that happen to a few card readers we lend at the library, some people will just use force without actually looking at why something is not going in.

Thanks Joe.
I have visually inspected and cleaned out that slot with toothpick and air. It looks fine - no bent pins, no debris other than dust. I am leaning toward some kind of poor connection on the logic board, especially since the adjacent mic port is non-functional as well. Take apart in a few minutes.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

nwyaker wrote: I have visually inspected and cleaned out that slot with toothpick and air. It looks fine - no bent pins, no debris other than dust. I am leaning toward some kind of poor connection on the logic board, especially since the adjacent mic port is non-functional as well. Take apart in a few minutes.

miley-signs003:

[nwyaker]

Well, someone with less attention to detail than I has been in this MBP. Swapped HD for an SSD and found several screws missing, including one of the battery retention screws and DVD retention screws, among others. Clearly the battery has been replaced, which I suspected since cycle count shows 2. It is an Apple battery.
No evidence of liquid. However, when looking at iFixit guide for removing logic board I noticed that there are some screws and connections on the inaccessible side near the SD and mic ports that might have some bearing on the lack of function. I will have to wait to tackle that since I don't have the requisite triwing screwdriver to remove the battery and hence the logic board.
Snappy with the SSD, of course !
Stay tuned.

[nwyaker]

Ok, so reassembly complete. The card reader now works ! The SSD I installed had Mavericks on it. The drive I removed was running El Cap.

I installed about half a dozen screws that were missing from the previous disassembly by unknown, obviously careless person.

So, what was the fix ? Mavericks drivers? Grounding issue because of missing screws ? Voodoo ?

Unfortunately, the mic port is still non-functional.