I've been active on classiccmp for a good many years now and up until now
have rather enjoyed making custom and hard to find cables for others in
the classicmp community.
Recently, someone on eBay managed to get their hands on a spool of genuine
DEC flat cord, bought a knock-off MMJ type tool (I saw him purchase it)
and started selling poor quality MMJ cables.
I couldn't compete and quit making standard MMJ cables, but this weekend
he started making H8571-J work-alike adapters to undercut me there too.
I know this person is active on the classiccmp mailing list. He started
listing his cables shortly after my post when I asked which length of MMJ
cables would be the most useful to the majority of the list members.
His eBay id is currently "cheshire-cat-computers" but he had been going by
"ggggmmmm" up until Jan 5th. I've been going in the hole now for 2-3
months with the listings for cables and I think after today I won't be
listing any more. I've now run out of 6-conductor flat cable and I'm down
to less than 2 dozen loose MMJ plugs and I'm thinking that its just not
worth the trouble anymore. I still have some adapter kits that I made up a
few weeks ago, but I think I'm just going to toss them in the junk box and
forget about them. I just have no desire to compete with someone who wants
to undercut me the way he has done as it appears my time is worth a lot
more to me than his is to him.
It was certainly fun while it lasted, and I shipped cables all over the
place, from Australia to Germany to the UK, and of course the USA and got
to talk to all kinds of people. I even had a few go to a couple of people
in the armed forces, so I guess they are still using DEC gear too :)
-Toth