6.1 Channel on motherboard

[hartken]

I have an a port on my motherboard that looks like the pins for the front panel. It is for 6.1 surround sound, and in the manual they say that you can plug a Toslink (optical) connection to it. I tried looking for the connector online but couldn't find it. I think it would just be a wire and a port to take up an expansion slot.

Does anyone know where I can find the connector for it? My goal is to use the 6.1 surround sound on the motherboard without buying a new sound card. The board didn't come with one, and the speakers on the back just give me 2.0 sound with a mini jack converter. My board is an ECS k8M800-M2. Thanks.

[Xayd]

i'm not sure about ECS but i know you can call Asus or MSI and get them for their boards. if it's the same connector, you could go that route.

motherboard manufacturers are terrible about this stuff, they put a feature on the board but never make the cable available to use it, heh.

[babelfish]

A Toslink port only provides an output for the encoded SPDIF digital signal.
You would need to then connect the other end of the Toslink cable to a surround sound decoder --such as you would have in a home theater receiver-- or to a set of powered speakers having an outboard suround decoder built-in. Otherwise, you need to install a sound card with a built-in decoder and the 5 or 6 discrete output jacks to feed sound to external powered speakers if you really, really want surround sound. :-D

Cheers!