What happened to my sound card?

[Deleted member 270419]

I was about to install my old Audigy 4 soundcard into my new motherboard, when I noticed this:

Seemed like the connectors that I used the most in my last build were fried . . or rusty? I'm not sure how this happened though . . my speaker system is only 55W total and it's even one of the old Creative certified sets. And the sound card was working up until my last build died. Meanwhile, my father says it was always like that, but I dunno, looks pretty unhealthy to me.

Any idea what happened to it? Do you think it's safe to install in the new motherboard to test it out?

 

[Toxxyc]

Wow that's pretty weird. All I can say it that someone spilled something on those connectors, as that is definitely not normal. See the metal used to build these things is covered with a rust and water repelling coating to prevent this, and that little protective layer can last years (literally, I have motherboards that were made in 2000 and they are still shiny). The sound system didn't do this anyway, it only receives a little signal from these ports. New build should be safe, but you can test the sound system with another signal transmitter (iPod, Walkman, etc.) to make sure. If it plays correctly, there is nothing wrong