The Zune Pinouts

[Jason]

theres and audio wire in the zune cord?

[Pocker09]

thats kinda exciting cause i wanted a zune video/audio out via the dock connector because it might be better quality video?(im not sure how the zune is set up) and because the audio that is coming out should not be amplified leaving the zune unit, meaning its perfect to connect to a stereo with out bad feed.

[lush-tech]

I created this pinout.... and it has been copied to a number of different zune sites. The original reason was to figure out how to create a dock cable that was both a charger and the Video/Audio out.

The problem with the zune is that the audio outputs on the dock connector are off by default, unless they are "triggered" by a device of some kind. Hense the "these are likely our triggers" notation on the 2 pins.

To date nobody seems to have been able to "hack" the "trigger" to enable these audio outpputs. Also, the Video output was another item I wanted to be able to "trigger" automatically. So say you have a video screen in your car, if you had a cable that charged your zune and triggered video and audio out, you would be able to just toss the thing in the glove box, and control it externally with a remote and see the video out on the screen...you would not have to go to the menu to turn this on and off....

[Bman22]

I was thinking. In order to figure out how this "trigger" works, somebody should dissasemble the dock and follow the traces from the correct pins, see where they lead, and maybe figure this out.

[froggger]

somebody shoudl make a little ipod to zune adaptor so you can use ipod accesories with the zune, since ipod accesories are dirt-cheap and easy to come by.

[Bman22]

what alot of people dont realize about the idea of making ipod-to-zune adapters is that the "triggers" and other things are very different. Especially with fancier devices. These require drivers the zune just wouldnt have, so the idea of that is just not really practical. It would be only possible with simple ipod cables. not much that has a main board or any kind of circuitry

[corylulu]

soldering the pins would make it more convent to use all of IPods docking stations though. if you have a full wire cut then you would have to do it for everything. I would rather have a converter.

[fearstyle]

soon as i get 5 posts im going to mkae a new thread with a take apart on the zune 2 dock i just ripped it apart and photographed it, later i will be having at it with a multimeter and a oscilloscope and try to ID all the components and maybe figure out this so called trigger

[EDIT]

Ive posted the dock taken apart here : http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/zun...ken-apart.html

Theres a XBOX Labeled chip on one of the 2 boards and i have no clue what it is

[jacksonebueno]

This is interesting ,but what are they??

[drperry]

Originally Posted by Sexified Loveandhatejw

take your zune cord cut it and attach the wires don't try an solder the pins

This will not work, the normal sync cable is a basic USB cable, with a Zune connector on one end... It only has the normal 4 USB wires in it.

However, looking into the Zune end of the cable, all the pins appear to be there... So you could attach your own wires and make your own cable...
Assuming you can open the plug without breaking it...

[Illegal]

i have a quick question.

if say, my pin 1 got bent or broke off, would i still be able to use the usb side with pins 2 and 3 in place?

[jimster01]

is it possible to make ur own

[Artemisgoldfish]

Originally Posted by Illegal

i have a quick question.

if say, my pin 1 got bent or broke off, would i still be able to use the usb side with pins 2 and 3 in place?

This is really hard to say...The USB 5V+ might be tied internally to the other 5V+ lines, or it might not. the only way to tell would be actually trying it.

As per the trigger sensing, it may be difficult to say what the behavior of these lines are without having a logic state analyzer. For instance, they could merely be pulled high or low with a resistor or direct connection to the 5V+ or GND, or they could have a logic-leveled handshake with an IC in the dock. Throwing together a Zune to iPod connector adapter wouldn't be too ridiculously difficult if you had the right connectors (see here for the Zune connector and here for the iPod connector, albeit the iPod Female connector is a SMD part, which is a pain in the ass) When I get some money, I might invest in some of these connectors and use some of my plentiful IDE cabling to solder together a prototype platform and see how it all works.

[Fuzzykoala]

thanks for the pinouts

[ikofthetoids]

Idea:
It appears that there are several pins that serve no function. Could it maybe be possible then for MS to make accessories like game controllers and such that use these pins to communicate with the zune?

Just a thought...

[Criztaztrophe]

This is very interesting ... I need to learn more about this stuff!

[account4me2]

Originally Posted by Tom_in_AZ

Agreed, I picked up a white cable from Walmart around $9 and it works perfect for video output, and the cable is white in color.

Are you serious? A white cable... that's white in color?

[Guitarmansam89]

white could be a brand. there are some pretty dumb people out there and he was making that clear.

but any way. I bought a few sync cords to experiment with. following the pinouts i connected the audio and gnd pins and couldn't get anything out. i belive it was because i don't know the trigger.
i found a sweet homemade ipod dock im going to try to use that(not directly i have to adapt it to zune)once we get all the pinout.
i cant believe apple gave out their entire pinout and Microsoft hasn't. thats completely backwards

[ianrab]

Has anyone actually experimented with the trigger pins? Or are people just asking what they do? SparkFun.com has a Zune Breakout board that I might get to play with.

...and I think "white" refers to "iPod" as "black" would refer to "Zune" (no racial implications)

[mr_toasty]

Originally Posted by ianrab

Has anyone actually experimented with the trigger pins? Or are people just asking what they do? SparkFun.com has a Zune Breakout board that I might get to play with.

...and I think "white" refers to "iPod" as "black" would refer to "Zune" (no racial implications)

Well, zunes ARE in most cases a little bigger.