I was able to move my 160GB hard drive from my Shuttle system to my new CoolerMaster/Chaintech 7NIF2 system with no apparent need to reinstall anything. I guess since they're both nForce2 motherboards. I was surprised to see that it worked, but everything seems to be working. My extra PVR-250 was detected, I configured it, and all seems to be fine. Whew.

The one thing that won't work is S/PDIF. Although the ads still claim that S/PDIF is an option and that there is a connector on the motherboard, that connector has been removed on my version of the motherboard. I thought I'd seen this mentioned elsewhere but was hoping it wasn't the case.

So I'll need to find another digital out solution. Any recommendations? I may just go with a external Sound Blaster MP3+ since this thread describes how to set it up:

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... hlight=mp3

Thanks for any advice.

Is the board drilled to accept a header? If you're handy with a soldering iron it may be a simple solution. Sucks that they're cheapening the board and lying about it on their website, tho.

I'm using an Abit NF7-M motherboard that is pretty equivalent, but with a larger footprint (more PCI slots). It has the same onboard GF4 video and Nforce2+MCP chipset. With your excellent DigitalAudioHowTo I'm slowly making progres on my "issues".

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I used to be handy with a soldering iron about 35 years ago. Not any more, at least not to the level that I'd be brave enough to do that to a motherboard. The space is still there and it's even labeled S/PDIF, so it could be done, I'm sure... just not by me.

Thanks for the advice and good luck with the digital out. I'm hoping I can get it going again with whatever outboard box I end up getting.

Outside of soldering, what is a good sound card that can go into the 7NIF2 to add the s/pdif output?

Or, are there any other mobos with s-video out as well as s/pdif? Newegg seems to have tons of s/pdif boards but a search of s-video is not turning up anything outside of the 7NIF2.