On Fri, 5 Jun 2015, Fred Smith wrote: > if it's a desktop, I'll assume it's already a 3-prong polarized plug > (unless someone has used a 2-3 prong adaptor, or the building is > mis-wired. > > All the above kind of assumes a US-like outlet. I don't recall where > the OP resides/works, so that may be all wrong. Correct. North Dakota. It's a desktop in an old house. The outlets have ground-fault protection, but the third prong is ungrounded. > You can get cheap devices that plug into a 3-prong outlet and have little > LED lights that indicate whether the wiring is correct, as regards ground > and neutral, or not. > > Also, it's possible that you've got a cheap headset/mic combo that does > not have the shielded audio cable wired correctly. It's also possible > that it's a cheap-a** rig that doesn't even use shielded cable from the > plug to the mic/phones. It's an Insignia NS-PAH5101 It does not have a separate power source, just plugs for the pink and green sockets. The cables are pretty thin. If the problem is shielding, is there something I could do to shield the cables? -- Michael hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu "SCSI is NOT magic. There are *fundamental technical reasons* why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain now and then." -- John Woods