Optical port on PC

[nemethmik]

I bought a FIC Sabre 1815(http://www.fica.com/products/systems/Databook/Sabre1815/Sabre1815.stm) Slim PC, which has extremelly lot of I/O ports including an SPDIF (optical) port.
What devices can I connect to my PC via this optical port?

[liquid217]

you don't say whether is input or output.. If it's an input, you can connect a cd player, mini-disc, or practally any high-end audio system. If its an out put, basically all of the same type devices (except for a cd player). One good thing o like to do with the sp/dif out is to connect it to my av amplifier. The sound is really goooooood :)

[nemethmik]

Thank you four your reply liquid217. You seems to be an expert
in this arena.
The manual has "Use this port to connect a SPDIF-type device to the system". I had thought that an SPDIF-port is bidirectional (like USB/FireWire), and now, I learned that it must be either in or out.
How can I find it out? I browsed the device list in Windows XP's Device Manager but I found nothing about that port.
Is it supported by Windows XP at all?

[liquid217]

generally sp/dif acts just like an audio line input or output. (generally in conjunction with a sound card). It is possible (though i have never heard of it) of the sp/dif being auto-detectable, so it can be either in or out. I would suggest that you contact the manufacturer and ask them. sp/dif doesn't act like usb or firewire. Basically you can think of it as a really good analogue cable(although it is pure digital data, windows and most applications treat is as a analogue). As an example, my sound card (hoontech digital-xg) lists the sp/dif input under the recorder tab in the sound mixer, the little yellow speaker in the bottom right-hand corner. hope this helps.

[nemethmik]

Thanks a lot for the short tutorial.
It helped a lot.