2 Aug
2006
2 Aug
'06
11:11 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Most of the "typical" ones are pretty intuitive. Though
"null terminal" was a bit of a head-scratcher.
Yes, instead of using "9 pin widgets", I use short 9-25 pin
pigtails when I need to make that sort of adaptation for exactly
this reason.
On Wednesday 02 August 2006 05:44 pm, Don Y wrote:
I wire each of
these widgets for a specific purpose:
- gender changers (M->F, F->M)
- "null modem", "null terminal" :-/
- PLIP
- Sun "port A/port B" swap
- device specific requirements (some devices use unusual
pins for handshaking, etc.)
- etc.
If you have that info in a file I sure wouldn't mind taking a look at it.
Could come in handy some time. I know I've run across the odd bit now and
then. Like the DEC printer that was the exact same mechanism
as several others I'd
seen around that time (Apple imagewriter? Some others I can't recall) but
which required one of the handshake lines to be pin 10, or maybe it was 11.
Nothing special about that printer, and it was really pretty slow compared
to a lot of others out there (though not as noisy either), with one
exception -- when you fed it a "*" it printed an actual 5-pointed star. Only
printer I've ever seen that did that. :-)
Some devices put power on certain pins, some devices use pins
for nonstandard reasons, etc.
Instead, I
dynamically fabricate the cable that I need by patching lengths
of straight through M-F cables together. Then, apply whatever combination
of "widgets" are needed on each end (in theory, you only need to do this on
one end but sometimes you need a 25->9 pin adapter and other times its
easier to do some of the "widgeting" on each end instead of having 2 or
three cascaded widgets hanging off one end of the cable)
Just so. Those things stretching out horizontally behind an item of equipment
sometimes doesn't work real well either, so a short cable at that end to let
'em hang might be another option. Is there a standard about which parts of that stuff
are supposed to get the
screws and which are supposed to get the little threaded posts and such? I
bumped into hassles with that already, too.
The shells that I have accommodate jack screws on one end -- so
I let that decide where to put each bit of hardware.