On Jan 31, 2012, at 3:24 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
1) RS (used to?) sell cables with a moulded
mini-DIN on each end. Cut said
cable in half and wire the bare ends to whatever you are building. I
don't think tye do 9 pin ones though (they did do 8 pin ones when I was
makign serial cables for my Epson PX4/PX8 machines).
The same applies to power cords: the electronics store near my
parents' house in Baltimore (similar idea to what Radio Shack used to
be, back when it was really Radio Shack) will sell me a power cord with
a wall plug on one end and exposed wires on the other for $5. It will
sell me an otherwise identical extension cord for $2. A pair of cutting
pliers is the great equalizer. :-)
I never much cared for moulded mains connectores. You can never be sure
the wiring isn't hanging on a couple of strands, and there's no adequte
cable clamp (I've seen many moulded mains plugs over here whre the outer
cable sheath is pulling out of the plug. But anyway...
BAck tyo cutting cables in half...
Over here the telephone plug crimp tool [1] is hard to get and expensive (I
don';t meen a 6p4c tool, those are easy to get over here, even though we
don't use that connector for telephones (officially). I mean the tool fr
othe BT Plug 431A, etc. On ther other hand, telephone extensuon cables
are easy to get and cheap. You guessed it....
[1] If anyone knows a wouve of a decenmt, not too expensive tool for the
UK telephone plug, I am interested. I mena something better than the
plastic thing that Maplin, etc, sell, and something that doens't involve
spending well over \pounds 1000 for a press tool, punch and die.
Getting back to classic ocmputers, one of the few video game consoles I
have is the Vectrex. This uses DE9 connectoes for the control pads, but
they're recessed into the case so a normal DE9 socket and hood won't
fit. About 20 years ago (when I was buildign stuff for htis machine) one
of the current games consoles -- I think it was the Sega Megadrive --
used DE9s for the control pads too. I found that if you bought a cheap
etension cable or cotnrol pad for that unit, you could shave a little
off the moulded DE9 socket so it would fit the Vectrex case, then cut the
cable and use it to wire your joystik interface, light pen, etc, to the
Vectrex...
-tony