Viao with broken PCMCIA port

A friend gave me a Sony Viao to troubleshoot after the shop wanted to put a
new motherboard in it for $900. It's a few years old, Model PCG-XG29, with
the MBX-25 motherboard.

I got that thing apart and found that the vertical socket for the PCMCIA
card-holder had been busted off the motherboard. This is the female socket
that is mounted to the MB, that accepts the male "card" type pins that are
hard mounted to the PCMCIA card carriage.

Anyway, I would thinkt removing the debris so no pins are shorted would just
have the MB seeing open pins, as if there are no cards inserted. Is this
right?

Should I be able to operate the laptop, just without PCMCIA functionality?