[UnsteadyKen]

In article ,
says...
And would a 6 year old PC have a place to plug the other end into?

Most unlikely, many PC's/motherboards and laptops have an optical
output, but I've only seen digital inputs on consumer PC
interfaces/cards such as this.http://uk.creative.com/p/sound-
blaster/sound-blaster-z

Wouldn't be much point connecting a CD player to a PC as it is easy
enough to rip a CD, those outputs are generally used for connecting to
an external DAC,recorder or AV receiver.

--
Ken O'Meara