Full pic of the card might help.

It seems fairly clearly connected to that chip on bottom right, but can't read part number fully. If you could get better shot of that it might give us more clues. Not getting anything off the partial number.

Here's a picture of the full card!

Looking at this data sheet for the STAC9700T: https://www.datasheets360.com/pdf/-5749582026796894052
it appears that 3 of the pins that you can trace all the way through are connect to CD left, CD right and CD Ground. At last if I'm reading it correctly that is, if true that does make sense that it is an audio connector for a CDROM.

Sometimes if a connector doesn’t fit but has the same pinout and pins and footprint you can pop off the plastic part and push on the plastic part that you need. I recently did this on a kingsten cpu upgrade interposer that had a almost floppy connector but not quite a floppy connector.

When it doubt, it's probably for CD audio. Are there any basic cards where this input isn't present?

Just wanted to post this here in case it helps someone else. I wasn't able to find any information this particular connector, so I'm just figuring that it was a propriety connector. I also wasn't able to find anything about the card's manufacturer PowerData. That being said Bitwrangler's suggestion to look at the traces between the connector and the nearby chip confirmed it was a cdrom audio connector. A look at the vogons cdrom audio connector wiki (https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/CD_audio_connectors) indicated that the pattern was the same as a mpc-2 connector (Right Ground Ground Left). I ended up just ordering an mpc-2 to mpc-2 cable off ebay, then just cut off the clip and little plastic nubs on the bottom.

After that a little hot glue to hold it in place and good to go!

Tested with mechwarrior 2 to confirm cd audio and no issue.

you can pull the plastic off and push on any connector you want onto the pins so long as it's the same pin size and spacing

Thanks for the advice! To be honest I'd be afraid of losing the plastic piece I pulled off, this way it's at least together in it's natural state.

How does the XG MIDI on that card sound? It looks like a good, basic XG card for MIDI listening, though absolutely worthless for creation. It also has Sensaura 3D, so it should be interesting to test that out with some good headphones.

arianon wrote on 2022-02-02, 05:19:

Just wanted to post this here in case it helps someone else. I wasn't able to find any information this particular connector, so […]
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Just wanted to post this here in case it helps someone else. I wasn't able to find any information this particular connector, so I'm just figuring that it was a propriety connector. I also wasn't able to find anything about the card's manufacturer PowerData. That being said Bitwrangler's suggestion to look at the traces between the connector and the nearby chip confirmed it was a cdrom audio connector. A look at the vogons cdrom audio connector wiki (https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/CD_audio_connectors) indicated that the pattern was the same as a mpc-2 connector (Right Ground Ground Left). I ended up just ordering an mpc-2 to mpc-2 cable off ebay, then just cut off the clip and little plastic nubs on the bottom.

After that a little hot glue to hold it in place and good to go!

Tested with mechwarrior 2 to confirm cd audio and no issue.

Do you have CD audio on both channels? The white header the card uses tends to indicate the R-G-L-G pin assignment, though this is not always the case.

I had similar sound cards with similar headers before, but with MPC-2 cables as-is (R-G-G-L) only one channel worked. I have to move the left channel wire (the white one) to match R-G-L-G pin assignment to get both channels working.

If this is true, then it should be easy to identify which pins are ground with any basic multimeter with a diode setting.

RetroGamer4Ever - It sounds pretty good! I don't think it is as good as a stand alone Yamaha XG midi device, but I bought it to use while playing Final Fantasy VII in place of the software XG synthesizer that comes with the game. It has done a great job there.

LS10999 - I must have gotten lucky, I traced the pinouts and the inner two pins were connected to CD Ground and ended before reaching a pin. I popped in a Stereo audio CD and was able to get both right and left channels, so no issues fortunately. Definitely got worried after reading your post!

I don't have a multimeter handy, but I'll try to get my hands on one for testing.

You can buy the absolute cheapest you can find. The most important feature is the little diode or speaker symbol that will allow the multimeter to beep when touching the probes together. This allows you to trace the path of a circuit.

It's also possible to do this by reading resistance but having it beep at you is a lot more convenient since you don't have to take your eyes off of the board to read a display.

Do Harbor Freight still give them away free with purchase as a promo from time to time? A few other places I've hung out on the web have reckoned those ones are fine for rudimentary troubleshooting on cars and computers.

edit: I seem to recall their regular permanently on sale price was only $4.97 or something if you didn't wanna buy $20 of stuff you'd use anyway (IDK, oil washer fluid etc)

Edit2: Oh inflation, yeek! They're 6.99 now and I guess no longer yellow since Fluke started suing anyone else for making yellow multimeters.

I have a bunch of Harbor Freight multimeters from when they were on sale for free with some other purchase. I used to go to the store and buy a 50 cent extending blade cutter just for the free multimeter. They haven't had any good coupons since Covid started. I used to get all of my batteries from them using a similar promotion but I haven't seen one in months. Nitrile gloves are also very expensive now, if they have any in stock at all.

Here is a photo of my favorite multimeter I got off of eBay. I like it because of how small it is. The LCD is a good size and it also has a diode setting. The only issue is that it doesn't automatically shut off and will drain the battery if you forget to turn it off.