mic jack not working

I have a PowerBook G4, almost new. It does have a jack with a little picture of headphones (which does work) and right next to that is another jack which I presume is a mic input jack. The symbol is a circle with 2 black triangles pointing at each other.

I have never been able to get an external mic to work at all on this, or even to show up at all in the audio prefs Input Level, no matter how loudly I scream. I have tried 2 mics.

The internal mic does work at this time.

I don't think the input is just for a mic I think apple does some weird thing where it is an "audio input". I couldn't get a mic to work in the one on my iMac, so I had to get a USB headset.

Mic jack

That port is for high-end recording. It will not work unless you have a powered microphone connected to it. I had to figure this out on my own as well. I purchased the proper mic adapter from www.maccomputersupply.com (you can get it from other sites as well. I know that www.mac.com does not have it though. What i use now is a USB microphone from the site i listed above. You can also go to radio shack, and pick up a battery operated mic with the correct jack for about 20 bucks. In case I did not clarify. The mic needs to be amplified, like with a battery inline or powerd. That is why i got the one from that site, the USB one I mean. I hope this helps.

Rob.:headphone

Griffin Technology iMic 2, USB Audio Interface 9066-IMIC2

G4guy said:

That port is for high-end recording. It will not work unless you have a powered microphone connected to it. I had to figure this out on my own as well. I purchased the proper mic adapter from www.maccomputersupply.com (you can get it from other sites as well. I know that www.mac.com does not have it though. What i use now is a USB microphone from the site i listed above. You can also go to radio shack, and pick up a battery operated mic with the correct jack for about 20 bucks. In case I did not clarify. The mic needs to be amplified, like with a battery inline or powerd. That is why i got the one from that site, the USB one I mean. I hope this helps.

Rob.:headphone

Click to expand...

I just thought I would update this post, the actual product is "Griffin Technology iMic 2, USB Audio Interface 9066-IMIC2" The link to it is here www.maccomputersupply.com it was about 35.00 bucks but a life saver. I use Vonage when I travel oversease for my business and that little gadget and my PowerBook kept me going.

Hmm. Think I'm a spokes person for the Vonage folks! Don't buy the stock but the product is well worth it if you travel.

Thanks! I finally broke down and ordered an iMic2.
Cheapest I found was 30.99 including shipping for a new one from Amazon.
JaJa had it listed for 27.99, but they wanted $10 shipping.