Strange Red Light In Headphone Jack MacBook 4,1

[ArtemT]

I was fooling around with 10.04 last night and noticed some strange red light to the side of my macbook (left). I look over and there's a red light glowing inside of the headphone jack. Insanely confused. It's not a laser so it can't be an optic headphone jack, right? Thoughts?

[tgalati4]

It's either a digital outlet port or a miniturized version of HAL 9000.

"Open the Door, HAL"

Get a TOSlink cable and plug it into your stereo system. It might actually work.

[sha.goyjo]

It's either a digital outlet port or a miniturized version of HAL 9000.

"Open the Door, HAL"

Get a TOSlink cable and plug it into your stereo system. It might actually work.

It's a digital port. It's standard, dude.

EDIT:
Sorry, that came off sassier than I meant. Yes, confirmed, it is a digital port. Also, the only thing scarier than full size HAL 9000 is miniature HAL 9000

....or perhaps maybe just HAL.

[linuxopjemac]

digital audio port. You can disable the light with alsamixer, it's something with IEC958... I don't remember. mute it with "m". If you insist, I check it on my MacBook, I am working on my Pismo now.

maybe this will work too

amixer set IEC958 off

[Craig Magner]

Think its something to do with drivers on the macbook. Itll be fine

[funkwurm]

I have this happen under Mac OS X sometimes, if you put the jack not all the way in, a connection is made that triggers a "this must be an optical wire"-handler which produces the red light. And sometimes when you pull the jack out again, it stays.

Fully inserting the jack and removing it should do the trick. Repeat a couple times if necessary, try it slower, or faster. Maybe twist a little... Okay maybe I'm describing a different insert-remove-insert-remove activity here

[quickridge]

digital audio port. You can disable the light with alsamixer, it's something with IEC958... I don't remember. mute it with "m". If you insist, I check it on my MacBook, I am working on my Pismo now.

maybe this will work too

amixer set IEC958 off

This worked for me on a macbook pro 3,1 running Lucid.

I have this happen under Mac OS X sometimes, if you put the jack not all the way in, a connection is made that triggers a "this must be an optical wire"-handler which produces the red light. And sometimes when you pull the jack out again, it stays.

Fully inserting the jack and removing it should do the trick. Repeat a couple times if necessary, try it slower, or faster. Maybe twist a little... Okay maybe I'm describing a different insert-remove-insert-remove activity here

Since the red light only appeared when running Ubuntu, not OS X, this did not appear to be the problem for my case (i.e. there was not some switch that become stuck within the headphone jack since the problem seems to be software related).

[Zookalicious]

Success on a 5,1 running 10.04. Thanks

[Oliver Cardoso]

amixer set IEC958 off

It works with 10.04 on MackBook 6,1

Thanks,

[taryneast]

I have a MacBook 5,2 and alsamixer worked for me.
The one to disable (with the 'm' key) was labelled: S/PDIF