S/PDIF TOSLINK mod for a motherboard

Problem: A motherboard (Asrock Conroe 865PE) that has no digital audio output.

Solution: alsamixer shows a control for IEC958 (which means digital output), and also that the codec chip is Realtek ALC850. Docs from Realtek show that digital output is at pin 48, and it can directly drive TOSLINK transmitters like TOTX176.



Black blob on lower left is the TOTX176 (or TOTX178 or something like that, I'm not sure as I took it from a broken DVD player), 100nF capacitor between its ground and Vcc and a pin header for those, signal wire going to Realtek chip with a loop through a connector to remove physical strain on the soldering. Added a launcher button to XFCE4 (the window manager I use), executing "/usr/bin/amixer 'IEC958' toggle"; meaning that clicking it will toggle the output on-off.

Problem solved. :)

Happy Valentine's

This is just lovely.

I like to keep all personal messages - cards, letters, emails, sms' - for sentimental values. And now, for no apparent reason, my cellular (HTC Diamond) decided to lose ALL messages sent or received on Valentine's day. Nice. I did backup all messages a couple days ago, but didn't make it a scheduled job or to be done after each receive/send, so that doesn't help. The irony is that I wanted to make backing up automatic right from the beginning when I got this phone, but it seems that Windows Mobile is as nice to make do things for you as regular Windows is. *Explicit deleted*, that is. Some regular Python love ought to be enough on _any_ platform. (Well, yeah, I did find out there is Python for WinCE, but I doubt messaging APIs are up to the task...)

Looks like it's time to cash in for the Linux kernel development project on this cellular.