[Icom] Sony VAIO laptop receive audio & using headphones simultaneously

[Doug Fields]

Hello all,

I have a 756 pro II and a Sony VAIO Z505 laptop. The laptop has only a 
microphone in - not a line in. I have two questions if you all don't mind. :)

1) I've run a standard headphone cable from the rear "external speaker" 
jack to my laptop's "microphone input" jack. This seems to work properly as 
long as I keep the AF volume very very low or turn the RF gain down (which 
does wierd things to the analog meter). Does anyone know how to turn the 
microphone input into a line input on the Sony VAIO laptop?

2) When plugging in a headphone into the front jack, the rear jack stops 
sending audio to the laptop. Is there any way to get both connected 
simultaneously? By leaving the front headphone jack only half-plugged-in, I 
can actually get this to happen, with some attenuation of the signal in the 
headphones (maybe in the laptop too but I can't really tell), but I don't 
know if I'm breaking something.

Why do I want to do that? Pretty simple actually: I can copy code reliably 
at up to about 10-12 WPM, but all the CW nets I'm attempting to join go way 
faster than that (I'm working on it!). So, I figured I'd run a CW decoder 
for when people are going too fast for me and won't QRS.

Thanks,

Doug