CDrom etc. - why the audio cable?

I've been installing CD/DVD reader/writer units in the PCs of friends
and family for a while now (easy once I'd sussed "master" and "slave"
ha ha) but I'm intrigued as to why sometimes they come with a tiny
"audio cable".

It looks like one end goes in the unit and the other in either the
sound card or motherboard, but I've never used one, and it's always
worked ok. I asked a PC engineer once and he fobbed me off with "If it
works without, why worry?" which is fair enough, but I'm still eager
to know why they supply them.

If anyone knows, I'd love to know why, for no other reason than
curiosity!

Thanks
Paul

"Paul Jones" <prjones@spambegone> wrote in message
news:...
> I've been installing CD/DVD reader/writer units in the PCs of friends
> and family for a while now (easy once I'd sussed "master" and "slave"
> ha ha) but I'm intrigued as to why sometimes they come with a tiny
> "audio cable".
>
> It looks like one end goes in the unit and the other in either the
> sound card or motherboard, but I've never used one, and it's always
> worked ok. I asked a PC engineer once and he fobbed me off with "If it
> works without, why worry?" which is fair enough, but I'm still eager
> to know why they supply them.
>
>


The cable is needed on *some* systems...
probably depending on the software and operating system.

I know a lot of the win98 machines I still work on need it for CD audio...

However if it works without the cable don't worry about it

The audio cable was required on older systems using ISA sound cards. They
did not have the capability to get the sound data passed through the bus as
pci cards do. The cable is no longer needed when using integrated or pci
sound cards

With the older systems the CDROM drive did the digital to analog conversion and fed the analog signal directly to the sound card. This was necessary to be able to play audio CDs without the sound braking up while running applications at the same time on old slow PCs running crude OSs such as Win3.x and Win9x.

Brian wrote:
>
> The audio cable was required on older systems using ISA sound cards. They
> did not have the capability to get the sound data passed through the bus as
> pci cards do. The cable is no longer needed when using integrated or pci
> sound cards

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Mr. Curiosity: Good question. Prior to Windows XP the data signal from the
CD/DVD player ran thru the ribbon cable, but the audio signal HAD to go thru
a separate audio cable. In XP the software changed to where the data AND
audio signals from the player both travel thru the ribbon data cable.

--
DaveW

----------------
"Paul Jones" <prjones@spambegone> wrote in message
news:...
> I've been installing CD/DVD reader/writer units in the PCs of friends
> and family for a while now (easy once I'd sussed "master" and "slave"
> ha ha) but I'm intrigued as to why sometimes they come with a tiny
> "audio cable".
>
> It looks like one end goes in the unit and the other in either the
> sound card or motherboard, but I've never used one, and it's always
> worked ok. I asked a PC engineer once and he fobbed me off with "If it
> works without, why worry?" which is fair enough, but I'm still eager
> to know why they supply them.
>
> If anyone knows, I'd love to know why, for no other reason than
> curiosity!
>
> Thanks
> Paul
>

DaveW <> wrote:
> Mr. Curiosity: Good question. Prior to Windows XP the data signal
> from the CD/DVD player ran thru the ribbon cable, but the audio
> signal HAD to go thru a separate audio cable. In XP the software
> changed to where the data AND audio signals from the player both
> travel thru the ribbon data cable.

That change happened a LONG time before XP showed up.


> "Paul Jones" <prjones@spambegone> wrote in message
> news:...
>> I've been installing CD/DVD reader/writer units in the PCs of friends
>> and family for a while now (easy once I'd sussed "master" and "slave"
>> ha ha) but I'm intrigued as to why sometimes they come with a tiny
>> "audio cable".
>>
>> It looks like one end goes in the unit and the other in either the
>> sound card or motherboard, but I've never used one, and it's always
>> worked ok. I asked a PC engineer once and he fobbed me off with "If
>> it works without, why worry?" which is fair enough, but I'm still
>> eager to know why they supply them.
>>
>> If anyone knows, I'd love to know why, for no other reason than
>> curiosity!
>>
>> Thanks
>> Paul