09 December 2008

Surplus source for CAT cable

Since soldering MiniDin8 connectors is a tough job, I have found out that in the past there were two commercial applications using these cables:
  • Sun SPARC and 3/80 keyboards
  • Apple Macintosh RS-422
According to a websearch ("sun keyboard pinout"), the Sun keyboard cable has two couples of shorted pins. Fortunately they are not vital for the FT817 keypad application: just eradicate them (pick the right ones!). I've done it and it works.

The same website shows a more friendly pinout for the RS-422 cable, that would be ready to use right away.

One problem: how to find these cables?