Chosen Solution
I have a 13” 2-port Macbook pro (non-touchbar) where one of the USB-C ports is unreliable. Sometimes I can connect an external screen to it, sometimes a simple flash drive works. Other times it doesn’t. Sometimes it helps if I rotate the USB-cable. Today I actually successfully made it charge through that port - I had previously given up on that… The other port seems to be working just fine, however I do recall once or twice where I had to take the plug out and try it again. I know that this version has the ports soldered to the motherboard so I’m not going for that repair myself. But does the problem come from the ports themselves or could it be the chip ‘behind’ them? How can I determine this?
The diagnostic process isn’t always so cut and dry. Sometimes we just don’t have a means to test things so precisely remotely. In this case if it’s the chip or the connector the action is the same, replace the logic board. Sadly, there is no means to isolate out any deeper without having direct access to the system to do deeper tests, and even then the likelihood of repair is not very good if either component is damaged.
