Swapping a cd drive

[learntojive]

I'm trying to make a good pc out of 2 old ones for my son to mess about on. One is fine but the cd writer doesn't work, the other is broken but the cd is fine. I've been reading up and it seems quite straightforward to swap them so i thought I'd have a go myself. I've got them both stripped down and I can see the flat cable and the little bundle of wires which seem easy enought to swap. However the one I'm taking out has a little grey wire (its got fine black, red and white wires inside the grey one)that goes from the back of the cd drive to a little socket on the main board.
The machine I'm transferring it to doesn't seem to have the little socket it's plugged into (there's a black a white and a green all next to each other) and the cd I'm removing that's faulty doesn't have this wire. The machine it's going into was from work and doesn't have sound, could it be something to do with that? and would it be easy to add sound? Thanks for any help you can give me, I'm thinking maybe I should have just taken it to someone who knows what they're doing!

[rojash]

Yes, the wire you describe is the Audio out cable. You can just ignore it if you don't want to play CDs (which, of course, you can't without a sound card!)
Even without it, you could still play CDs (if you had a sound card) by telling XP to use the digital output.

[learntojive]

Thanks very much, can I take the sound card out of the old computer and put it in the other or is it not that simple?

[rojash]

Yes, but you may need to download the drivers (although Windows may detect it and use its own). Of course, if you've got the drivers disk, then no problem at all.

[learntojive]

You've been very helpful, thanks very much.