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Friday, February 24, 2006

Phone Handset for a PC

     

I use my PC for a lot of voice conversations, for simplicity sake, I just use the voice feature of MSN Messenger, although I would like to play around with some of the other options like Skype.
I was using a cheap microphone I had laying around, and the other person was always having trouble hearing me unless I held the microphone right next to my mouth. I would also get some feedback type issues if I didn't use headphones. I know they make headsets that would solve all those problems, but I happened to have some spare junk laying around, (an old headset, coil cord, and two 1/8 inch jacks) and with some inspiration from a ThinkGeek product, I decided to adapt a telephone headset to use with my computer. It was really pretty easy. I just cut one end of the coil cord off, and stripped those wires. I opened up the headset and used a multi-meter's continuance mode to figure out exactly which of the wires went to what. It was then just a matter of soldering 2 standard 1/8 inch jacks to the end of the corresponding ends of the coil cord. I added a little electrical tape, and I was done. I plugged it in and it works great, actually as I am typing this, I am using it with a voice conversation, and the both of us can hear better, and I get the satisfaction of getting to hold a big hunk of plastic while I talk.

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