How Do You Adapt A Plaintalk Microphone To Connect To A Power Macintosh G5?
I should start with a disclaimer that the solution that I eventually get around below to discussing is not something I have actually built and tested. It should work, and it shouldn’t damage anything; but I cannot guarantee anything; and I take no responsibility for what happens if someone actually tries what I suggest below. It came up in a conversation last night with my brother that he’d never been able to get any microphone to work with his Power Macintosh G5. With some research, we were able to get some idea of what sort of input the G5 expects on its microphone input, and apparently nobody actually makes, or has ever made, a simple microphone to provide this. The basic sort of microphone used with PCs produces a “microphone” signal level around 1 millivolt peak-to-peak; but the input on the Macintosh wants a “line level” signal level on the order of a volt peak-to-peak. The PC microphone has the right connector, and the right signals at the right places on that connector, but the
