[Chris O'Brien]

I have a 400MHz B&W G3 and ever since I bought it (about 3 years ago) it has only ever had sound output from the left channel. I got it with OSX 10.0 and OS9 and it was the same in both OSes. I asked this question ages ago over at the apple support forums and was told that it possibly because the CD-ROM drive isn't connected up properly - this would make sense, since when I bought it, the guy took out the CD-RW drive and put in a standard CD ROM drive. I've since put in a DVD-ROM drive and still only get the left channel. I can't see any connectors lying aruond to put into the DVD-ROM -so what gives?

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks very much

[Chris O'Brien]

No one got any ideas? It's killing me here! I've survived three years and can take it no longer!

[Bartman]

I want a little clarification before I suggest anything. Do you get sound in two channels (left+right) when you play an mp3 or a quicktime movie?
CD/DVD-Rom drives usually have an audio connector from which is connected to the motherboard/soundcard. If this cable is broken, you won't get audio (or single channel) from the drive when playing an audio cd.
Other than that, you may have a bad audio jack. You can get a USB speakers or get a USB-audio out adapter.

I hope this helps.

[Crusoe]

I don't own a B/W nor have I a recent PowerMac (Performa 6400) but I'll give some suggestions.

Typically there is a small 3 (or 4) pin port in the drive which needs to be connected a similar port on your motherboard. The cable should have come with the drive if this was the case though.

Another idea is within the headphone port (if your Mac has one) the connector may be stuck down fooling your Mac into thinking it has headphones attached. Insert, listen and withdrawl set of headphones (if applicable)

I'm guessing you tested it with a few pairs of speakers/headphones.

That's all I can think of initially

[Chris O'Brien]

yeah, it's when I play any audio, either from my harddrive or from the DVD-Rom (or the old CD-ROM) drives...

I did contemplate getting USB stuff, but i assumed this would be an easy to fix problem...

Crusoe: I've put in another set of speakers when I first found the problem, but there was no change I'm afraid...

It's starting to play on my mind now.... grrr

[Bartman]

hey,,

Since you tried different speakers and still get the same result, it is probably from the connector on your mac. I guess you should get a USB-Audio out adaptor and hook your speakers to it..

[tooki]

A couple of things: the motherboard audio connector from the optical drive is only used (on the B&W) in OS 9 or earlier, and even then only by some CD players (iTunes does not use it). OS X always uses the "digital audio extraction" over IDE method.

That, combined with the fact that ALL audio plays only on the left channel, shows that it's the motherboard audio circuitry (or the jack) that is faulty.

(As an aside: the no G3 ever shipped with a CD-RW drive, only with CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. Any other kind of drive is an aftermarket addition.)

tooki

[Chris O'Brien]

Originally posted by tooki:

the fact that ALL audio plays only on the left channel, shows that it's the motherboard audio circuitry (or the jack) that is faulty.

So any idea's what to do then? Am I royally screwed, or can I get this fixed (inexpensively ).

Originally posted by tooki:

(As an aside: the no G3 ever shipped with a CD-RW drive, only with CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. Any other kind of drive is an aftermarket addition.)

Well that's actually quite a relief - thought he'd ripped me off a little. It's my best mate from college's dad who sold me it.

[Freeflyer]

My bet is that it's the headphone socket that's to blame. Chances are, that there's a dry solder joint that's failed. Are you reasonably handy with a soldering iron, or know someone who is?

What I'd do is open up the mac and look at the back of the headphone socket. Where it's soldered, you should be able to see 3 leads connecting to the circuit board. Just touch a hot soldering iron to them briefly until the solder just melts and then remove it. This will resolder the joint.

Plug in and see if it works. If it does, great, if not then it could be that the socket itself is damaged. You could desolder it from the board, take it to radio shack and get a replacement, solder it in and see if it works now. If it doesn't, you've only spent a couple of bucks and are no worse off.

It goes without saying that you should only try this if you're reasonably comfortable with electronic stuff, otherwise you could damage the machine.

Oh, and I know it's a hackneyed thing to say, but make sure you unplug from the mains.

Good luck,

J.

[Chris O'Brien]

I'll have a go at that tonight. Cheers.

I'm an undergraduate electronic engineer (not that that in itself particularly qualifies me to be able to solder - but I've done loads in my time) so I think I'll have a bash myself at this.

For some reason, I never thought it'd be a connection fault. Well, it might not be, but I should've at least thought about it....

Ah well

[macaddled]

How do you connect your Mac to a sound source? Do you connect to a stereo receiver? Or directly to powered computer speakers?

The speaker out jack on Macs are TRS (tip-ring-sleeve) stereo jacks. Meaning, the little connector that goes into it should have TWO rather than just one black band at the tip.

If your current cable just has one black band, it's a mono connector and will play just out of the left speaker.

Go down to radio shack and get a TRS stereo 1/8" miniplug that will connect to your speakers, and see if that does the trick. Shouldn't cost too much.

edit: ah, you're in the UK. Well, go to whatever shop electrical engineers hang out in that sells cables, transistors and such...

[Chris O'Brien]

Macaddled - the connector has 2 black bands. Damn, I had my hopes up there
Ah well - when I eventually shut this machine down (probs a week or so - depends when I want to boot into Mandrake) I'll have a go with a soldering iron.