Whats the purpose of the short round 4 pin/3 wire cable that came with my new cdrom?

  • Thread starter Thread starter arek
  • Start date Start date
A

arek

I know that it connects to the motherboard for the purpose of
transferring sound. But the sound is transferred through the big grey
ribbon anyway!?

Thanks

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comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom, comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,
comp.os.linux.hardware, alt.comp.hardware,
 
I know that it connects to the motherboard for the purpose of
transferring sound. But the sound is transferred through the big grey
ribbon anyway!?
Click to expand...


Why did you ask if you already knew the answer? Audio *can* be
transferred over the IDE cable, but it requires more resources than
analog mode.


-WD
 
I know that it connects to the motherboard for the purpose of
transferring sound. But the sound is transferred through the big grey
ribbon anyway!?
Click to expand...

The audio decoders implemented in hardware on your CD device can take care
of a multitude of read problems (skips, gaps, etc.) to give you "seamless"
sound. However, the output is in analog format, and is fed out that
4pin/3wire cable.

OTOH, software running on your computer can read the digital data that makes
up the audio track of a CD through the IDE bus (that big grey ribbon cable),
and store it. The problem is that such software isn't as good at realtime
correction of those read problems as the built in hardware is. Thus,
software access to audio CDs can show it's seams. This method is also
vunerable to a number of exploits (see the attempts by the RIAA to prevent
the digital copying of audio CDs) that can cause a range of errors, from
poor sounding audio through to physical damage of CDROM drives.
 
Lew Pitcher said:
The audio decoders implemented in hardware on your CD device can take
care of a multitude of read problems (skips, gaps, etc.) to give you
"seamless" sound. However, the output is in analog format, and is fed
out that 4pin/3wire cable.
Click to expand...

Most CDROM drives also have a digital output, a two-pin connector half
the size of the four-pin one.
OTOH, software running on your computer can read the digital data that
makes up the audio track of a CD through the IDE bus (that big grey
ribbon cable), and store it. The problem is that such software isn't
as good at realtime correction of those read problems as the built in
hardware is. Thus, software access to audio CDs can show it's
seams. This method is also vunerable to a number of exploits (see the
attempts by the RIAA to prevent the digital copying of audio CDs) that
can cause a range of errors, from poor sounding audio through to
physical damage of CDROM drives.
Click to expand...

Can it actually damage the CDROM drive? How does it do that?
 
Måns Rullgård said:
I know that it connects to the motherboard for the purpose of
transferring sound. But the sound is transferred through the big grey
ribbon anyway!?
Click to expand...
[snip]
OTOH, software running on your computer can read the digital data that
makes up the audio track of a CD through the IDE bus (that big grey
ribbon cable), and store it. The problem is that such software isn't
as good at realtime correction of those read problems as the built in
hardware is. Thus, software access to audio CDs can show it's
seams. This method is also vunerable to a number of exploits (see the
attempts by the RIAA to prevent the digital copying of audio CDs) that
can cause a range of errors, from poor sounding audio through to
physical damage of CDROM drives.
Click to expand...


Can it actually damage the CDROM drive? How does it do that?
Click to expand...

I don't know, but it has been reported at slashdot.
IIRC, it involved an invalid TOC which forced a seek to an invalid address.
 
I know that it connects to the motherboard for the purpose of
transferring sound. But the sound is transferred through the big grey
ribbon anyway!?
Click to expand...

The little cable is for nalog sound to the sound board.
 
Lew Pitcher said:
I don't know, but it has been reported at slashdot.
IIRC, it involved an invalid TOC which forced a seek to an invalid address.
Click to expand...

It must be a terribly bad CDROM drive that takes damage from such a
thing. Was the reported damage physical, or had something in the
firmware screwed up?
 
Let's see if i understod this tech lang correctly:

the little cable is for analog sound to the sound board.
The audio decoders implemented in hardware on your CD device can take care
of a multitude of read problems (skips, gaps, etc.) to give you "seamless"
sound. However, the output is in analog format, and is fed out that
4pin/3wire cable.
Click to expand...
Its best to use 4pin/3wire cable when ripping copy right cd's as it
will probably be coppied despite counter measures. This method is
better than using the IDE bus.
When both analogue and the IDE bus cables are connected at the same
time the computer will automatically choose the analogue method for
copping.

Is it possible to only use the IDE cable for listening to audio cd's?

thanks
 
It must be a terribly bad CDROM drive that takes damage from such a
thing. Was the reported damage physical, or had something in the
firmware screwed up?
Click to expand...

Or could it be a garbled version of the Lucky Goldstar "try to flush
my buffer and I'll flash my ROM" misfeature?
 
Joe Pfeiffer said:
Or could it be a garbled version of the Lucky Goldstar "try to flush
my buffer and I'll flash my ROM" misfeature?
Click to expand...

No, just coincidence and misuse of statistics to form an "urban legend".

One day one persons cdrom drive died. He looked at the cd audio cd he was
playing in another computer and found that the disk had a bad TOC. He then
concluded the bad TOC broke his cdrom.

Like what ? He did a study of a set of one and found that 100% of cases, a
bad TOC breaks the cdrom.


He doesnt have enough statistics to form this conclusion ... and there wont
be enough statistics anywhere - the problem being people dont test their
drives for this.

And anyway, if the drive can move its read head in such a way as to jam
itself, then its got bad firmware.
 
I know that it connects to the motherboard for the purpose of
transferring sound.
Click to expand...

No, its for transferring an analog representation of that the sound that was
recorded (in digital form ) to the audio CD.

But the sound is transferred through the big grey ribbon anyway!?
Click to expand...

No, the digital data that represents the sound can be read that way.

Defaults for this to happen with windows XP and Windows Media Player.
This reduces the number of fault calls support services get about cd roms
not playing "Yes I have the volume turned up. " "oh you mean theres a volume
for cdrom device , on the volume control ? "
 
I know that it connects to the motherboard for the purpose of
transferring sound. But the sound is transferred through the big grey
ribbon anyway!?

Thanks
Click to expand...

<SNIP SPOILER SPACE leading to ?NOTHING?>

It transfers analog sound from the CDROM/DVDROM/DVDRW/CDRW drive to
the soundcard. It was the common way to get sound from the CDROM (et
al) to the sound card before someone digital audio extraction became
the way to go for getting the sound information from the CD.

For the most part, it's not necessary, but some older games store
music or even the complete sound track as CD audio tracks, and rely on
analog reading for that sound. These days, it's not really a
necessity, which is why some drives don't even come bundled with one.

Since you've got it, it can't really hurt to hook it up, and it gives
you support for some programs that need analog CD streaming. The only
thing is that if you're hooking it into a motherboard's onboard sound,
the manufacturers seem to always put the CD-IN connector in the most
awkward place possible -- sometimes right in between two expansion
card slots. If it gets in the way or is too much hassle to hook in,
you probably aren't loosing much if you don't bother with it.

Now my question:

Why did you have something like 2 pages of spoiler space below your
original post, leading to nothing?
 
dsads said:
What u talking about?
Click to expand...

The post being replied to had about two pages of blank lines sprinkled
with a few lines containing a single period (.).
 
Måns Rullgård said:
The post being replied to had about two pages of blank lines
sprinkled with a few lines containing a single period (.).
Click to expand...

Of which the last few lines read:
 
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