At 9:20 PM -0800 1/15/00, Roy D. Welch wrote:
>3. Should the old "silver dollar" mic work, and does the fact that it did
>not work signify a problem with the hardware?
It probably should not work. Those old silver dollar mics were not
exactly high quality devices. :) As I recall from when I had a
Quadra 660AV (one of the first Macs to have PlainTalk capability),
the manuals said that the machine could use the old style silver
dollar mics only for recording sounds; if you wanted to use PlainTalk
you *had* to use the supplied PlainTalk mic or something better.
The big difference is that the PlainTalk mic accepts power from the
computer on the third pin and uses it to amplify the mic's signal to
the standard audio line level (1 volt peak to peak). This allows
much higher quality sound than a simple unpowered mic like the silver
dollar ones, as the signal from the microphone itself is very weak.
Without any amplification, the long cable connecting the mic to the
computer sharply limits the fidelity of the signal.
One solution may be to use a powered microphone from Radio Shack or a
similar store. You can get these with a standard 1/8th inch mono
plug. Of course, this means that it will have to have some source of
power other than the PowerBook, such as a battery or AC adapter. The
only caveat is that the PB needs to be capable of accepting a line
level input. I think any PowerPC Mac can do this even if it doesn't
have a PlainTalk style jack, but check the manual to be sure.
Tim Seufert
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