Did you check if the CD áudio is not muted in the mixer?

jheronimus wrote:

Hi, all! […]
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Hi, all!

I've recently bought a Pentium MMX machine to play some late DOS games. However, I have a problem with audio CD playback so I don't have music in Quake and the likes.

My sound card is Cirrus Logic CrystalClear 4235-KQ, and originally this machine came with some Pioneer CD-ROM, but I later added a Sony CD-RW drive (both drives are installed and working). Here are the facts:

1) music works when I use the headphone jack on the front of the CD-ROM drive;
2) the 4-pin connector is inserted in the analog port of the drive and in the sound card. It's the cable the machine came with;
3) tried both drives, tried inserting the cable in the sound card in reverse;
4) tried installing the drivers for the sound card.

What else do I need to do? Thanks.

Adding to alexanrs's suggestion, you could also try a different audio cable. I don't know how old your old Pioneer DCROM drive was, but I do know that in the dark ages of CDROM, not all audio cables used the same wiring (sometimes the wires were switched around)

edit:
Sorry, I overread you tried both drives with the same cable. I dunno if it could result in anything being damaged though, don't want to start a scare 😲
I wouldn't plug in the cable in reverse though, unless this only switches the right and left channels around.

alexanrs wrote:

Did you check if the CD áudio is not muted in the mixer?

yes

Check pinouts for the audio connectors - some are Left GND GND Right, while others are GND Left GND Right, so you need a cable that matches specifically. Usually the cable is colour-coded with Left as white, Right as red, and GND as black, so it' s easy to see if it matches the pinout usually written on the drive and the card, which are often different.

Usually the little white connectors are GLGR while the larger black connector (similar to the PC speaker connector) tends to be LGGR, but this isn't always the case.

Some newer drives, especially DVD-RW drives, do not output analogue Audio, despite having the port.

So, closer inspection revealed the cable to have following pins, left to right, eject thingie up:

red yellow black white

The Pioneer (original) CD ROM reads:

R G G L

So I guess, if yellow and black are both ground, then the pinout is correct from CD ROM's point of view.

The sound card does not have a pin layout written, but it says SONY/IDE next to the compatible cable jack, and PANASONIC next to an incompatible one.

Here's what I found what I tried to google "sony ide pins"

So, looks like the same pinout as Pioneer, only upside down (looks like eject thingie should be placed downwards in Sony and upwards in Pioneer). So it should work, but it doesn't. What am I missing?

Just thinking about it, if the pinouts were wrong, you'd have one of three problems:

• RGGL -> RGLG = right audio, left muted
• RGGL -> GRGL = left audio, right muted
• RGGL -> LGGR = left and right swapped

So no matter what CD cable you use, you should always hear at least one channel of CD audio.

Since you get no audio with either CD drive, it must be the sound card input not passing along the signal for some reason?

Malvineous wrote:

Just thinking about it, if the pinouts were wrong, you'd have one of three problems: […]
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Just thinking about it, if the pinouts were wrong, you'd have one of three problems:

• RGGL -> RGLG = right audio, left muted
• RGGL -> GRGL = left audio, right muted
• RGGL -> LGGR = left and right swapped

So no matter what CD cable you use, you should always hear at least one channel of CD audio.

Since you get no audio with either CD drive, it must be the sound card input not passing along the signal for some reason?

Couldn't this also just create a short btw?
I dunno how these behaved with some of the pins switched around 😊

Typically because of the way the signal lines work, all a short does is "overpower" the signal making it some other signal instead (e.g. silence.) There's usually not enough current available to cause any problems.

Dos the problem exist in Windows and in Dos?

So, turned out it was a driver issue, after all. Win 98SE comes with some sort of basic drivers for this card, which is why I didn't bother to look for them. However, once I've installed the correct drivers (95/98 version, not 98/2K/NT), everything worked fine.

Thanks!

Nice! Well done! 😁