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Extending a headphone jack from a decased PC Speaker amp?

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ARTIFACT:

i will play with this tonight

i think i will extend the pcb jack since it will handle the 4 wires switching etc

i think i can nest it snug into the 3/4'' plywood front panel next to the coin door.

thanks again for input! :)

ARTIFACT:

looking at the PCB now... Warming up my iron... ohhh FUN

;)

ARTIFACT:

OMG

OK so it happened that a physical switch that was placed on the amplifier PCB BEHIND the jack... opening a circuit which disabled the main speaker output when the plug "pushed" the switch. ARGHH

SO

I am no electronic wiz, but I figured out how to reuse one of the headphone sides on my panel jack to open that when the headphones are plugged... It's a Radio Shack jack which has 5 prongs instead of just 3 ... the extra 2 are activated when the jack is not plugged. I was able to use that to replace the physical switch.

The result?

It works BUT 1 of the sides in the headphones is not working... IT'S OK... THE main goal was to give the miss a break with the noise when I play :) ... I'll just make a mono merger adapter so both ears get audio (just the same side). I can leave without true stereo headphones, especially when most of the times it's Donkey Kong that's running! ;)

I am proud that it's working!! Again I am totally new to all this stuff...
I had a ton of fun doing it...



Zebidee:

hiya Artifact,

What you really need to do is buy a new phono jack and wire it into the SPEAKER OUTPUT from your PC.

ie, the sound signal travels from PC -> jack -> amplifier

All jacks are different I guess, but they usually work by:

1) breaking the GROUND contact while simultaneously ... 
2) redirecting the ground contact to the headphone plug.

This is how they turn off two stereo channels (or more) at once - sometimes it just requires testing your new jack with a plug and multimeter to work out which is the ground etc, and getting your head around it.   The left/right channels are probably just pass-through, but can't be sure in all cases. 

What this means is, if you put your headphone jack onto the PC output line and, so long as it provides for breaking the ground contact, you won't get sound output from your amplifier after you plug your headphones in.

So don't de-solder the old plug from your PC amp, just buy a new one from RS for a couple of $$.  It'll be neater and easier to mount as well.

Oh, what the heck it looks like you hve been having fun hacking away anyway :)

ARTIFACT:

hey thanks for the log write-up

did you see / read what i ended up doing?
i am pretty happy with it (mono, but still :) )

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