HD Audio wires

[oofmaster64]

I have these wires that are used for microphone and headphones and I also have a connector used for this with the same wires. If i'm correct, these are color coded which means I can just splice the coloured wires with the same colours? (Aside from the twisted black and red those are for speakers)

[dalekphalm]

Technically you can splice any colour wire with another colour. As long as the gauge (thickness) of the wire is sufficient for the application.

 

However, yeah, you should match colours.

 

However, what exactly are you trying to do?

[oofmaster64]

What I'm doing is hooking up the existing microphone and headphone jack from a pc from an old iMac g3 to a modern hd audio connector.

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, oofmaster64 said:

What I'm doing is hooking up the existing microphone and headphone jack from a pc from an old iMac g3 to a modern hd audio connector.

I would check a Pin Diagram to make sure - the colours will not necessarily match, especially between an old iMac G3.

 

I found this online, but cannot confirm it will match yours:

 

I would assume you need Pin's 1, 3 (mic) and 5, 7 (Front R/L).

[oofmaster64]

I thank you for this information but either way, If they wouldn't match up, even with the same colours. Why on earth would they have different colours in the first place?

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, oofmaster64 said:

I thank you for this information but either way, If they wouldn't match up, even with the same colours. Why on earth would they have different colours in the first place?

Well, a manufacturer uses various colours to represent the time of wire it is, eg: various data signals, voltage (+ and -), etc.

 

But there are different standards used by different industries/companies.

 

Some have no standards at all.

 

The iMac G3 isn't using standard ATX x86 design, so they may have used the same colour coding - but they may have also invented their own.

[oofmaster64]

If you want a closer look, I will give you this picture:

[dalekphalm]

Unfortunately that doesn't give me any new information to help with your problem.

 

What you should do is try to find a Pin-Diagram of the iMac G3 front audio panel, and then you can match the specific pins, instead of guessing with colours.

[oofmaster64]

Unfortunately, I was searching for the diagram while you were typing that and I couldn't find any results on a diagram for this.

[kirashi]

15 minutes ago, oofmaster64 said:

I thank you for this information but either way, If they wouldn't match up, even with the same colours. Why on earth would they have different colours in the first place?

9 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Well, a manufacturer uses various colours to represent the time of wire it is, eg: various data signals, voltage (+ and -), etc.

But there are different standards used by different industries/companies.

Some have no standards at all.

The iMac G3 isn't using standard ATX x86 design, so they may have used the same colour coding - but they may have also invented their own.

Exactly this. A standard isn't a standard if a single manufacturer chooses to differ from it, which is exactly why they could have different colors.

 

[mariushm]

An iMac so old (iMac G3 was around 2001) will be more likely to follow the AC'97 audio standard, not the HD AUDIO standard - the Intel HD Audio specification was ratified around 2004 and from what Wikipedia says, iMac G3 were made up until 2003.

 

But being apple, it could very well be some really random arrangement.

 

What you can do would be to get a digital multimeter and a stereo jack or a stereo cable with a stereo jack at one end and 2 RCA jacks at the other end.

You can set the multimeter in continuity mode and you plug the stereo jack into the microphone or headphones output and then put one probe on one of the contacts on the rca jack and one on each pin in that connector and  when you get a beep you know that pin does that function

 

left and right may be the other way (or the mic power and mic) and i'm too lazy to really look it up but it doesn't matter, you won't damage anything, worst case you hear left channel on the right speaker so you just invert the wires.

So for example shove the stereo jack into the headphones connector, put one of the multimeter probes on the insides of one of the rca jack because that's the left or right audio and now press with the probe until you touch the metal contacts inside the connector.

When you hear the beep, you know that pin is for left or right channel headphones output.  Now move the probe on the inside of the other rca jack and repeat.  Then put the probe on the outside of either rca jacks because that's the ground wire, and probe again those contacts inside the connector to figure out which one is the ground wire (most likely the black one, or the darkest one)

 

[Pixel5]

On 21.12.2017 at 10:39 PM, oofmaster64 said:

I thank you for this information but either way, If they wouldn't match up, even with the same colours. Why on earth would they have different colours in the first place?

chiming in on this one, especially apple is known to not follow standards so even if there would be one for the color coding there apple will probably not follow it cause fuck you thats why.

[SlipperyPete]

On 12/21/2017 at 4:29 PM, oofmaster64 said:

What I'm doing is hooking up the existing microphone and headphone jack from a pc from an old iMac g3 to a modern hd audio connector.

in the future using the quote feature (circled in red below) will allow the user your responding to to receive a notification, meaning you will be more likely to receive a reply

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