Re: CDROM's headphone jack old-fashioned?
On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 04:36:26AM +0800, Dan Jacobson wrote:
> What are the 4 wires from "analog" prongs of my CDROM unit to the
> "CD1" prongs on my motherboard for? Is this an old fashioned way of
> listening to music? How about the headphone jack on the front of the
> CDROM unit? Old fashioned too?
A typical PC CD-ROM has the hardware for playing audio CDs built in to
it, when you play an audio CD your software just tells it to start
playing. The analog output on the back of the CD-ROM and the headphone
jack on the front are the outputs for the audio hardware in the CD-ROM.
The analog audio output from the CD-ROM is still the most common way PCs
play, though some drives and sound cards also have digital connectors.
I'm guessing that your machine has on-board sound, which is why the
4-pin connector is on the motherboard instead of a sound card.
Some computers play CDs by reading the digital audio over the data bus
and playing it through the audio hardware. This is primarily done on
UNIX workstations and recent Power Macs.
> Anyway, say I retire it. Can it then play CDs without a computer
> around?
Some can, if it has the play/stop buttons on the front of the drive it's
worth trying.
--
Michael Heironimus
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