iOpener

On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 09:32:14PM -0700, Richard Erlacher wrote: Guh! I'm sorry, yes the ribbon cable was what I meant. Digikey is out of the AM44G-x-ND cable (which was 10' for $5.68), but they do have the MC44L-x-ND (which is 5m for $34.58!!! definitely worth waiting the week if you can stand it). The AMP 50-conductor cable would be AM50G-x-ND (where x is length in feet, 5/10/25/50/100/500), but when I called back to try to change, my order had already gone out, so I didn't press them to find out whether it's in stock. Since it requires a human to cut it to order, the web site automatically lists it as back-ordered whether it's in stock or not. They have the 44-pin IDC connectors too. The AMP is ASA44K-ND for $3.54, the 3M is MSA44A-ND for $4.47. Hard to tell from the sketches, but the 3Ms look to be smaller, which would be a good thing since the iOpener is so cramped inside. I deleted an earlier post before its Deep Inner Beauty sunk in, who was it that suggested switching the conductors by simply using two separate ribbon cables with a straight-through header between them? I like it! (Trying to figure out whether it would work makes my head hurt, but I think you're right.) Looks like a regular through-hole PCB header might even work, the solder tail end is only 0.85 mm shorter than the business end, according to the sketches in the Digikey catalog. Really stupid question: there's no BIOS support yet to make USB devices bootable, is there? Using a USB Zip as the system disk would sure save some trouble here, if only they weren't such a pain to program... John Wilson D Bit