SPDIF not working with ALC850 Realtek AC97 (nForce4 chipset)

[nop2]

I have an A8N-E motherboard (AMD processor) which has the nForce4 chipset and Realtek AC97 - ALC850 audio.

 

I'm trying to get SPDIF to work. Has anyone successfully tried it?

 

My audio works fine with the AppleAC97Audio.kext extension, but I don't get SPDIF output at all (even though I see that output in the 'Sound' panel in System preferences.

 

Here's what lspci says about my audio:

 

00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller [10de:0059] (rev a2)

 

As you can see, my vendor id is 10de and device id is 0059. The AppleAC97Audio.kext I have has those ids in its Info.plist file.

 

I would really appreciate any help. I read a lot of posts with no success.

 

Thanks!

[nop2]

by the way, to add to the above, I tried changing some settings in the Audio MIDI Setup utility, but no luck.

 

I only see two choices for sound format: 2ch-16-bit and "Encoded Digital Audio" both at 48000.0 Hz. None of them work. When configuring the speakers, only "Stereo" is enabled. The other options are grayed out.

 

At the end, I don't hear anything from the coaxial SPDIF output. However, I see a red light coming from the optical output, but I don't have a cable to see if it works. The coaxial works on my XP installation though.

 

Any help would be appreciated.