vacatedboat wrote on 2020-07-27, 00:17:

This is my soundblaster pro 2 card in my 386 system. I have ordered an audio out cable going from back of cdrom to the SB pro cd in. I had to solder on an old resister leg so i have the 4 pins and i have cleaned up with IPA.
My question is how is the connector keyed at the card end? On the j3 there is an arrow for pin 1 just not sure which way to plug in. Will there be damage if wrong way or simply hear no cd sounds.
Many thanks

There should be no damage if you plug it the wrong way, the 4 pins are just audio left, ground, ground, audio right. The worst that can happen if you plug it wrong is you'll have inverted stereo, nothing else.

The Sony/MPC2 connector is RGGL, so reversing the connector reverses stereo. Mitsumi is RGLG, so you'd have a reversed voltage into header. Your SB Pro is probably NLGR (where N is non connected), so reversing the connector would at least null one channel. I would expect the input impedance to be high enough for preventing damage, but the actual result would depend on the input circuit.

There should not be any damage if connected wrong but are you sure the cable you ordered will work with your CDROM ? Is always best to include the make/model numbers of any parts you are working with here. In this case the CT# of the SB card (if it is) and the CDROM make and model as there are many variants on how CD audio cables are connected.
I have a few SB Pro 2 and none have the J3 CD Input you show, can you supply the part number please ?

This is my sound card. Cdrom is nec cdr-1400b. The pic is hard to see sorry. Hope that helps. Just bout a internal analogue audio cable for cdrom off ebay.

Hmm my CT1600's have the CD audio input connector J1 and pin 1 and 3 are GND, pins 2 and 4 are L&R (mitsumi?). Not sure why your card was missing the CD input but mine is intact as J1 and yours is J3 which means they are from diff Multimedia kits or diff OEM versus retail. Sorry if I was a bit questionable but there are variants as these show and is why part numbers and pictures are so important with old hardware. Cannot make out the back of the CD but am sure you can figure out if you need to change wiring in the audio cable.

To my knowledge all CT1600 SBPro cards have the same white connector for the CD Audio In, in the OP's card it isn't there so probably the previous owner ripped it off accidentally while trying to unplug the cable. Compared to the MPC connector type this one can be somewhat difficult to unplug so I can see that happening.

Yes i think ripped off that would also explain why one pin was snapped and i resoldered another.
That pic with the mpc connector helps a lot with orientation. Thanks. This is a great place for old hardware.

Just an update. Am i getting this correct.
Im using opencp dos player. Have an old cd music in the drive and it plays perfectly out the speakers. But is the program making use of the audio out cable ive setup in pic.

Now onto getting an mp3 working. Ive got a 387 chip.
Thanks

Not sure about OCP, but MPXPlayer does digital audio extraction and doesn't require the internal connector cable. If you get sound out of the front headphone jack of the CD drive, you'll have an analog signal out of the rear CD audio header as well.

Just a quick reply. Yes i got the music playing through the headphone jack at the front of the cd rom drive.
Thanks for help

vacatedboat wrote on 2020-08-24, 03:48:

Just a quick reply. Yes i got the music playing through the headphone jack at the front of the cd rom drive.
Thanks for help

Nice. You're in business.