2) Make up a cable. Maingt the AUI drop cable is not
easy as the raw
cable is 4 twisted pairs, the power pair being thicker wire than the
other 3. [...]
However, it may break all the rules, but for short
lengths -- say
about 10cm, I think you's get away with a bit of IDC ribbon cable and
IDC conenctors. You probably don't nbeed ot bother with the locking
screws or climsp, jsut make up the cable and plug both ends in
That matches my own experience. I made an AUI extender (to bring
network out of a cobbled-together case) from a foot or so of ribbon
cable and two solder-cup DA15s (one of each sex). Worked perfectly
fine for me - though admittedly I put the transceiver directly on the
extender, rather than using a long(er) drop cable. I daresay the
impedance bump matters, but for lengths that short it apparently
doesn't matter enough to impair functionality - I deliberately tried to
push it and found that using something like fifteen feet of the same
ribbon cable instead, it sort-of worked but I with an unusably high
error rate (something like 2/3 of packets produced errors). The ribbon
cable in question was not the twisted-pair sort.
My extender also didn't bother with mechanical locking of any sort,
depending instead on friction between mating DA15s. Of course, the
intended use case did not involve significant levels of mechanical
stress or vibration, so, as always, YMMV.
Mouse