Question about disk drives and CD audio \ VOGONS

Question about disk drives and CD audio

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First post, by Ronin64

Posted on 2024-08-13, 21:40

Ronin64 Offline

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Joined: 2023-06-29, 15:20

Hi, I have a DVD drive with a SATA to IDE adapter in my PC that I use to play disks. But I was wondering will this play music from a game like Quake, since it does not have an audio cable coming from the drive. Do I need an IDE CD drive and an audio cable connected to my sound card to play CD audio? Thanks.

Reply 1 of 2, by wbahnassi

Posted on 2024-08-13, 23:41

wbahnassi Offline

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TLDR yes, just grab an IDE drive. You might find some SATA DVD drives that still has the analog audio connector, but don't be fooled by that. More often than not those connectors are duds. I'd say the definitive give away that a drive supports analog CD audio is the presence of a play/stop button on its chassis. Without that, I'd be pessimistic.
It is just easier to grab an IDE CD drive and connect it.

Also, if you are using WinXP, you can get CD audio without the need for the analog CD audio cable altogether. But older OSes don't have this facility to my knowledge.

Turbo XT 12MHz, EGA, MFM HDD
Intel 386 DX-33, Speedstar 24X, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
IBM BlueLightning 100MHz, CL5428, SB16, 4x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, RTX2060

Reply 2 of 2, by jmarsh

Posted on 2024-08-13, 23:50

jmarsh Offline

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wbahnassi wrote on 2024-08-13, 23:41:

I'd say the definitive give away that a drive supports analog CD audio is the presence of a play/stop button on its chassis. Without that, I'd be pessimistic.

Or a headphone jack on the front.

Also, if you are using WinXP, you can get CD audio without the need for the analog CD audio cable altogether. But older OSes don't have this facility to my knowledge.

Digital playback was added with win98, although I don't believe it was enabled by default like it was with winXP (probably because some drives at that time still had poor support and jittered all over the place while playing).

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