Hooking Up Telephone to Computer?

by jamesmcnee Sep 27, 2007 6:32AM PDT

We subscribe to the voicemail / call answer service offered by our telephone company. We don't have an "answering machine" but rather a system that works through the phone lines and I guess exists somewhere at the phone company.

I have some messages on that system that I would like to save for posterity.

Is there a way -- usb, firewire, audio in, mic in, modem / fax phone jacks, ... -- to "plug my phone into my computer" / "turn my computer into a phone" / whatever. I figure once I can get the signal into the computer I could figure out some way to record and save.

Any thoughts?

I'm running OSX 10.4.10 on an iMac G5

Thanks

Discussion is locked

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Sure...

by John.Wilkinson Sep 27, 2007 6:57AM PDT

You can connect a phone line to your computer's phone jack (from the wall jack) and then use a program such as Audacity (freeware) to record, setting the phone line as the input option. You wouldn't be able to use your computer to navigate through your message system, but if you listen in on another phone (use a line splitter if you don't have two jacks in the room) you can do it that way. When you're done you can split the recording into individual recordings for archival purposes, omitting the annoying voicemail menu selection sounds. I'm not a Mac user but it's cross-platform so I'll try to answer any questions you may have.

John

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Thanks John

by jamesmcnee Sep 27, 2007 11:28PM PDT

I'll give this solution a try.

My internet is a phoneline based DSL so we have filters on all the other phones. I'll need to get my head around what goes where.

But this sounds very promising.

Thanks

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by r. proffitt Forum moderator Sep 27, 2007 7:05AM PDT

"Recording Phone Conversations" at http://www.macintouch.com/audiorecord4.html notes some common solutions.

For me I'd go cheap. Radio shack had the old suction cup thingy that went to your tape recorder. Instead of the tape recorder run that to your MAC's line-in and find software to record.

Bob

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Thanks Bob

by jamesmcnee Sep 27, 2007 11:30PM PDT

I'm going to try the above solution -- phone line to computer phone jack -- but will keep the RadioShack suction cups as my ace in the hole!

Thanks

Hooking Up Telephone to Computer?

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