x8100 SPDIF port problem/question

I'm attempting to get some 5.1 sound out of my laptop and into my sound system, but I'm having trouble getting anything to come out of my SPDIF port.

Basically I have this:



When I look at my audio manager app. Those four dots on the right side seem to correspond to the four 3.5mm jacks I have on the side of my computer. My manual for the laptop labels them as (from top to bottom) headphones, microphone, line-in, and SPDIF-out. So far this makes sense as the SPDIF-out should be the last dot which is underneath "Digital" on the control panel.

Typically when you plug in anything to one of these 3.5mm jacks, you get a pop-up asking you to choose what you just plugged in. When I put any jack into the fourth port, however, nothing happens. I don't mean there's not just a pop-up, though, the control panel normally would change the color of the dot (like the first two, representing my headphones and mic being plugged in) to the darker shade, but nothing like that happens when I attempt to use that fourth port. That is, until I plug something into my microphone port, then I get this:



For some reason, my software thinks the microphone port is the SPDIF-out port. If I were to select the option indicating this was, in fact, the SPDIF-out port, the fourth dot and the second dot would darken as if to indicate they were both in use:



However even if I do select the SPDIF-out option there is apparently no signal coming from the port.

To further complicate matters I'm still not sure whether this is an optical or coaxial SPDIF-out port. I'm familiar with the red glow optical ports usually put out, and as far as I can tell none of the four 3.5mm ports have this telltale red glow, but at the same time the 3.5mm to coax/RCA cables that I've tried also don't seem to be doing anything.

When I click on the digital output from my sound manager menu:



and select properties:



the information seems to clearly indicate an optical jack.

I guess I have a few questions to answer at this point in time:

- How can you tell what kind of cable I need to be using? Is the lack of a red light enough to indicate it's not optical, or is there an option somewhere I can turn on that might enable this functionality. (In other words, was it turned off by default?)

- How can I go about fixing this? Is there a way to determine if one of the ports is bad? Can just one of them die without effecting the others?

I have tried the following:

- Updated drivers
- Tested with both a 3.5mm to Coax/RCA and 3.5mm to TOSLink style cables
- Made sure nothing was muted before testing
- Tried both unencoded and encoded 5.1 audio types (movies and games)
- Ensured that all other components (speakers, receivers) for the sound system were in working order
- Ensured the other audio aspects of my computer were in working order

Anyone have any ideas?

 

Did you try any of these?
Amazon.com: 3.5mm to spdif toshlink cable

 

I did, I actually bought these:

They're grey, but essentially the same thing.