I've installed the sound card itself no problem. The problem lies when I want to hook up my sound card to the in/out ports on the front of my computer case. The cable that runs from these ports looks like this: But the pins on my sound card (Rosewill RC-701 5.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card)only come in sets of 4. I need a fix for this. I would of taken more pics, but right now my light bulb blew out, my camera's broken, can't find my flashlight, and my DSi's quality is horrible in the dark.
Gah, now I have to figure out how to solder the pins on myself, where to connect them, buy supplies, etc. That, or try to find a way to make a AC97 adapter for the other sets of pins (the J1, J2, J3 sets. I have no idea what these are called, as I'm new to this, so someone please enlighten me). I'm also thinking of using a cable to connect the 4-pin things (as soon as I find out what they are called, how they work, etc) directly to the speaker/microphone ports on the front of my computer. Would this work? Lastly, before I dive into any of this, I will see if connecting the AC97 to my motherboard (which has pins for it) works. I disconnected it from my mobo to plug it into the sound card, but realized the sound card didn't have any, so I left it unplugged. I am new to sound cards, if you haven't realized it yet. And thus far, they are killing me, heh.
The 4 pin connectors are for CD-audio. Which isn't even used any more - I'm surprised they're on there but the front panel connector isn't. You can't just plug in your front panel connectors to the onboard sound and expect it to work - it's a completely separate sound card. Really the onboard one should be disabled in the BIOS. You could solder 0.1" male pin headers (don't forget to remove the key), but it may not be as simple as that - some support hardware may also be missing. This is what happens when you buy cheap hardware - buy nice or buy twice.
Oh. This is what I figured at first, but someone brought it up (as a longshot attempt), so I thought I'd try. Guess that's out of the question. Ah, I could do that. But seeing as it still may lead to complications with support hardware, I might not. The whole point was to get a cheaper sound card because Win 7 would no longer read my onboard card (and there was no more driver updates for it). At least the ports directly on the sound card work well; I just won't have the luxury of connecting things quickly on my front panel anymore, oh well. And nice motto, I should start following it. Thanks for the help.
