PCI Sound Card Plug on Motherboard

[HEUGE]

Hello,

I have a Toshiba M500D server with a Gigabyte GA-6BXD dual processor motherboard with the ISA slots not installed. I am therefore planning on adding a PCI sound card.

Since Creative seems to be the only player in town, I will probably purchase a SB Live X-Gamer 5.1 (Unless someone can talk me into picking up the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz)

The question is that the motherboard has a PCI Audio plug, a little six pin section where you are supposed to interface with PCI audio cards. Does anyone know specifically what this is for? I recall hearing about people with "stuttering" audio problems with SBLive boards. Does this interface allow for more specific timings? Is it used nowadays?

Thanks,

 

[NoFish4U]

Yea......what the heck is that for?

My Abit BF6 has one too and I didnt hook it up to my LIVE! card cuz I was clueless as to what it would accomplish.

 

[Wolfie]

I am "guessing" that those plugins you are talking about are something to do with DOS support. But I could be wrong. I am just throwing out ideas here.
If I had a pic of the plugin I might be able to help you a little more.

Wolf

 

[HEUGE]

OK,

It is diagramed on my Gigabyte manual as a 5 pin connector, but the pinouts list as 6. It looks kinda like this

ooo
o o

so it's three pins on top, and then two pins on bottom with the center missing.

It's called a SB-LINK, but I have no onboard audio.
PIN + FUNCTION
1 + SIGNAL
2 + GND
3 + NC (perhaps this is the one missing)
4 + SIGNAL
5 + GND
6 + SIGNAL

The two pairs of signal and gnd could be two audio channels, but what is the pin 4 signal for? And if I don't have onboard audio, is this some sort of non-functional cable? Ideas?

 

[AndyHui]

That plug was supposed to be for DOS/legacy support for SB PCI cards...but it is no longer used. It was only used for the AWE64D....AWE 64 PCI digital....it provided DMA, and a few other DOS settings. No soundcard uses it now.