Problems with Laptop S/SPDIF Output

[Tis-hame]

Hi guys wonder if you can shed any light. I appreciate that this is prob more a Laptop forum question; but I've tried that without any success.

I have a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook C1010 which has a S/PDIF Optical connector. This output emits red light continously.

Just to add that I can successfully use my optical cable from my normal DVD player to the MD (MZ-R700). Its just a bit long winded writing the MP3s to CD/DVD then playing them on the normal DVD player to get them onto my MD.

I have a check box on my Laptop Mixer advanced settings that is simply labelled "Digital Speaker". I've tried this as well as installing the latest CODECS but alas the MD reports NO SIGNAL when connected with the source playing.

Am I missing something fundamental ? Anyone else had similar trouble ?

Ultimately I have been looking for one of these USB devices that would allow the transfer of digital audio as well as the capture of analogue audio. Any recommendations ?

Thanks

[A440]

With your laptop, I can only guess what's going on, but I would bet it's a software annoyance: the sound not coming through the S/PDIF because some elusive Windows setting is incorrect. Look through all your Sounds and Audio Devices settings and see if there's some output more relevant than "Digital Speaker," make sure nothing is muted or unchecked, make sure any music-player software has its volume controls up, etc. Probably steps you've taken already, but Win XP does hide a lot of things under Advanced--maybe you missed one. It has happened to me.

Does anyone you know have something with an optical-in that you could try connecting to, to make sure something's coming out of the S/PDIF?

As for external soundcards, the M-Audio Transit looks very tiny and tempting, and you can find them for about $80. Here's an enthusiastic review:

http://www.audiomidi.com/aboutus/reviews/edge_transit.cfm

You'd still have to do all your recording in real time.

Then again, you could also put the $$ into a Hi-MD (or even a NetMD) with transfer via USB. For a downloader/ player, you can find the NH600D new for under $100 on Ebay, and for recording, the old NetMD's (MZ-N707) are also very affordable if you want the capabilities of the R700. You'd save a lot of time transferring.