GS60 digital audio - how is this used?

I have a GS60 and I would like to use the digital audio output to connect to a receiver. This laptop has 2 audio jacks:
- Microphone engraving, 3.5mm jack with mini toslink capability
- Headphone engraving, 3.5mm jack, electrical only
I found some bad info saying to use a mini toslink cable to get digital OUT, but that seems to be for digital IN. In the realtek control program, connecting the mini toslink cable to the microphone jack shows the microphone becoming connected and it is not possible to switch it to S/PDIF. Connecting a regular electrical plug to the headphone jack does allow me to select from 3 options: Headphone out, Speaker out and S/PDIF. Selecting S/PDIF I think might be what I'm supposed to do, but I tried this and had no luck with a 3.5mm <-> RCA cable. It shows up as being connected in windows and I can see sound being sent to it (the green bars in control panel properties) though no sound from the receiver.
Has anyone gotten digital output from the realtek codec on this laptop, and if so how did you do it? I'm not talking about using the HDMI port or an additional USB sound card - I'm trying to use the built in realtek codec, with either an optical or electrical cable.
Thanks,
Laszlo

Thank you for the reply. I have seen those instructions but maybe GS60 is different?
The optical mini-toslink cable goes into the _microphone_ jack, the one closer to the USB port. I think this is an input because I don't see a red light in the optical cable. Plugging in either an electrical or optical cable into the microphone jack does not trigger the pop up in the Realtek program.
The headphone jack, the one closer to the user, will not accept a mini-toslink cable. It's a different type of jack and the cable does not physically fit. Plugging something into this one does present options between Headphone out, Speakers out and S/PDIF out. I have tried to use this as an electrical digital out, by using a 3.5mm -> 2x RCA cable and connecting that to the digital input on my receiver, but I got no sound that way.
So basically:
Mic jack - accepts mini toslink or regular 3.5mm electrical plug. Does not let me switch the role of the jack.
Headphone jack - accepts only 3.5mm electrical plug. Lets me switch to S/PDIF but doesn't seem to do anything.
Any ideas? Could this be a mistake in the driver/software that can be hacked around somehow? Am I doing it wrong?
Thanks!

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Paging `dd` gurus: How did this use of `dd` destroy my Macbook Air HD?

Hi all,
edit: tl;dr:
1) What code tells the Macbook Air (or any PC?) how to boot from a flash drive in the USB port? That wouldn't live on the hard drive or be a part of the MBR or GPT would it? I would have thought that lives in the Macbook's firmware somewhere.
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end tl;dr
I'm brand new to Arch Linux, but really like it so far. I got it running nice and smooth on my 4 year old Macbook, so I tried installing it on my Macbook Air.
Long story short, I apparently permanently incapacitated my late 2010 Macbook Air's hard drive from a poor use of `dd`. A new hard drive is on the way and will be taken care of, but I'm curious to learn what exactly my actions did.
After my unfortunate actions, the macbook after powering on would just hang at a gray screen. Tapping the power button didn't do anything, but holding the power button turned it off. I tried putting in the system restore USB stick that came with it, and rebooted while holding down c, and nothing happened. Rebooting while holding down option didn't bring up the boot disk menu. Holding down Cmd+Shift+P+R seemed to reset the PRAM (at least, it restarted like it's supposed to), but didn't fix anything.
I took it into my local Apple store and the Genius at the Genius Bar didn't know what to do. He said we couldn't boot from a restore USB drive, which also means we couldn't boot into target disk mode. He took it to the back area and confirmed the issue is solely with the hard drive, but didn't know of any way to fix the drive (some sort of weird 'blade' drive?). The only thing we could do was order a new drive to replace it.
So my question:
WHAT did my use of `dd` DO, to so permanently mess up the drive? I would have thought it would make a non-functional partition, or at worst mess up the MBR/GPT, but I thought that I'd still be able to boot up with the system restore drive and reformat and fix everything. Isn't booting from a USB drive taken care of by the EFI firmware? Could `dd` really corrupt that?
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. It waited a while and then it gave the summary of how much it wrote. I didn't pay attention to the output, other than that it looked fairly normal, and I don't remember now what it said exactly.
11) I rebooted.
12) DISASTER
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Last edited by gjd (2011-09-26 20:08:52)

PSW wrote:
gjd wrote:WHAT did my use of `dd` DO, to so permanently mess up the drive? I would have thought it would make a non-functional partition, or at worst mess up the MBR/GPT
This would be my thought too. Unless the Hard Drives in Macs are fundamentally different from those in PCs dd shouldn't break the drive. At most it would corrupt the fuck out of the files on it. Nothing a little partitioning and formatting wont take care of.
I'm relieved to hear my understanding of booting is not too off base.
Is it possible to remove the HDD from a Mac? My first thought would be to plug it into another computer and see exactly what's going on with it.
It is possible to remove, although they're somewhat non-standard in shape (See: MBA's blade-type drives, http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/11/ … o-anyone/), so I'm not sure how I'd be able to use it on another computer.
However, today at the Apple store they're putting in a brand new drive, which is supposed to fix the problem. If my MBA can boot a brand new drive, I don't see why it wouldn't be able to boot my corrupted drive. I guess this raises two questions for me:
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nitramluap wrote:
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Number Of CPUs:          1
CPU Speed:          800 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):          256 KB
Memory:          768 MB
Bus Speed:          133 MHz
Boot ROM Version:          4.3.3f2
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Sales Order Number:
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<Edited By Host>

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GS60 digital audio - how is this used?

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