I would like to know where on the board (FRU 29R8260) do you connect the 4-pin analog audio cable coming from a cd-rom? I can see only one spot where it can connect, which has 10 pins +1 loner sticking up from board. (IBM or Lenovo was no help! No info in manuals) Thanks.

If your computer is relatively new you don't need to connect the data cable. The sound is carried through the DATA cable. Any port for the CD sound on the baord will not have pins at all. Will be a small socket and will be identified as CD or sound in. Did you try playing a CD to see if the sound already works?

OtheHill "If your computer is relatively new you don't need to connect the data cable. The sound is carried through the DATA cable Actually, that's determined by how old the optical drive is. E.g. ! have CD-Rom drives that were made in 1999 and earlier and they are able to send all audio to the mboard through the data cable on mboards that are as old as 1995. thatdoesnotcompute If you're not getting regular CD audio when you have no audio is cable connected to the CD drive, if the CD drive is not ancient, you need to change a setting in XP so everything goes through the data cable. Device Manager - DVD/CD-ROM drives - RIGHT click on the name of the drive - Properties tab click on the box beside Enable digital CD audio... to insert a checkmark if there isn't one there. If that's not there or if it is but it's greyed out, your CD drive is ancient and doesn't support that, or, your mboard is so ancient that it doesn't support that. . In that case, some sound cards (that you install in a ISA or PCI slot) have the pins you're looking for.

The 4 pin connnector is for an anolog signal. Although newer computers take the signal digitally from the data cable new drives still have the connector even SATA ones.

As in, the audio cable connection only outputs audio for legacy audio CDs, nothing else. Hardware Maintenance Manual March 27 2008 http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s... Page 121 - start 8143 section page 124 - mboard connections parts starting page 204 page 207 - System board - mboard - FRU 41X8329 I searched it - FRU 29R8260 - not in manual - no mention of audio cable or connecting it or disconnecting it for the CD or DVD drives - cables - many cables, none obvious for audio or sound "has 10 pins +1 loner sticking up from board" - pins - no mention of pins on the mboard for that - only pins mentioned are clear cmos pins ....... When I searched the Lenovo site with: 8143 I got ThinkCentre M51 Apparently FRU 29R8260 was used in several models FRU System board- 10/1000 Ethernet- with POV- DDR1 for ThinkCentre 8095 -29R8260-06 http://www.streetprices.com/Compute... Including ThinkCentre M51 29R8260 IBM SYSTEM BOARD W/ POV FOR THINKCENTRE M51 P/N: 29R8260 - IBM ORIGINALS http://www.upgradebay.com/c1_itemde...

Except for maybe a really old cdrom it's the player software and not the cdrom that determines if you need the analog cable. 9X and I think, ME, have a default cd player. I'm not sure about XP and newer OS's as I'm on the 98 machine right now. When using the default player you must have the 4-wire cable connected as it pretty much just passes the signal from the cdrom to the speakers with little or no processing by the sound card. I had an old P-I with an ISA sound card and could play cd's even when booting straight to dos. (I tried it on this P-3 with on-board sound but it didn't work.) As already mentioned, most other player software--WMP, winamp, etc--process the signal from the IDE cable so the 4-wire cable isn't needed.

Thanks guys for your quick responses. Sorry that I haven't been able to respond sooner. I got the cd/dvd audio working directly thru the data cable. So the hardware is not too old. (Great computer this IBM THinkcenter M51!)