AES stereo mod - a couple of suggestions

I was recently requested to stereo mod a home system and I came to the conclusion that it's perfectly useless to have hi-end connectors and cables if the signal undergoes a degradation at the source. The segment headphone jack-RCA jacks is in fact the weak point in the whole connection because it is commonly believed that the wires have to run on the underside of the board and as a consequence only a very thin and unshielded type of wire can be used. I found this to be unsatisfactory and wanted to use a thick shielded cable, specific for audio applications which would never fit under the board due to its thickness. The following pics show how it's possible to overcome this problem in a simple way:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v65/nassivera/stuff/headphonejack.jpg
A small portion of the PCB can safely be cut off as no traces pass through it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v65/nassivera/stuff/stereowiring1.jpg
The joystick port has mounting holes that come in very handy for securing the cable with zip ties.

An annoying thing when it comes to installing the RCA jacks on the rear panel is that the ground eyelets tend to turn round and round while you're screwing the hex nuts and when you're finished they may be far from each other and in an uncomfortable position for soldering the cable shielding to them. I therefore drilled the mounting holes across one of those reinforcing pieces of plastic and made a notch in it that could block the eyelets so that once I have finished screwing the nuts a single wire can pass through both of them.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v65/nassivera/stuff/stereojackholes.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v65/nassivera/stuff/stereojacksrear.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v65/nassivera/stuff/stereowiring2.jpg

I like your idea!

MKL, I threaded mine up through the hole behind the power switch.... I didn't have a problem getting them to fit and I used some pretty thick wires...

Nice suggestions.

Another easy way to do the ground rings is to tighten the nuts to finger tight, then adjust the rings so they make contact and apply some solder to hold them together -- then tighten up the jacks.

Jeff

I recently did it like this... by using a computer CDRom Audio cable, no need to route it underside of the board.

BTW Unibios is socketed, I removed the original Bios via hot air station without any damages or cuts on the legs...

It's a revision 3.6 board, so I cut the RGB traces under the crystal to eliminate the vertical jailbars problem when using an RGB Scart cable.