28 Jan 2003, 14:47, Wayne Chirnside (1:275/311), wrote to All:

Hi Wayne.

 WC> ISA proprietey SoundBlaster card into which a
 WC> Creative or Panasonic drive plugged directly into the Sound card.
 WC> Now I'm running a new CD-ROM drive on IDE 1 and I noted
 WC> the analog audio cables do not match.
 WC> These are both female connectors I'm speaking of.
 WC> The old cable for the Creative CD-ROM drive is wired
 WC> blank, white, black, red with red to the side of the drive
 WC> while the new CD-ROM's cable goes into the drive as  
 WC> white, blank, black, red 
 WC> Same order but the blank is in a different place on each plug
 WC> and the pins do not match.

 WC> I want to get audio off the new 40X drive but not let the smoke
 WC> out of anything.

The old SB - Creative CD is wired G-L-G-R (looking at the back of the CD
drive), and many times one of the "G"rounds was left out of the
cable since they are connected together on both the drive and the sound
card. 

Two different type of 'white' plugs were used, one fit a set of round pins,
the other fit a set of mini-square pins.  You might need a magnifyer to
tell the difference.

The new CDs, and sound cards as well, with the wide flat black plug
(sometimes with a locking clip) are wired R-GG-L with both G's connected
together on the sound card and in the drive.

Put your meter on the pins of the card and the CD to ID the grounds first,
as you wouldn't want to ground the output from the CD drive.  I can't
remember whether they were protected by a resistor or not.  Any two pins
that show up connected together are the grounds.

Don't trust the colors, as every supplier used different colors, red,
green, yellow, white, black, were all used interchangeably with no rhyme or
reason.


     Good luck...  M.

--- Msged/386 TE 06 (pre)