Where to find thin wire in multiple colors?

[megashock5]

I'm still stuck on the wiring phase of my cabinet. I have the miniPac with the wiring harness and I need to lengthen some of the wires. I found the male/female connectors to add more wire but they only had two colors of wire.

It will be a lot easier to keep these straight if I stick with the coloring that's on the wiring harness already.

Has anyone installed a miniPac that might have any tips for finding wire that's like stuff on the harness?

Thanks in advance!

[conseit68]

I have 25 pair CAT5 cabling. Thats 50 different color coded wires 

let me know if you need some...

Matt

[MonitorGuru]

Go to a thrift store or rummage sale and pick up the totally unwanted 10 foot or longer old style parallel printer cables. You can usually get them for 50 cents or less.

Cut the ends off and slide the wire bundle out. Most have all 25 wires in place (look for thicker bundles--about 1/2" diameter instead of 1/4").  Each wire typically is a totally different color or color/dash combination.

Be aware these are ONLY good for signal cables... e.g. buttons and joysticks, as they typically are very thin wires like 22 gauge or smaller.  Do NOT use them for carrying any amperage like to light bulbs as they will get hot and be a fire hazzard.

[nickbuol]

I picked up some nice wire at jammaboards.com.

[nostrebor]

http://www.therealbobroberts.com/

20 gauge wire pack--10 colors 10'each--100' total wire - $7.00

[Q*Bert_OP]

How much do you need?

[Avery]

I bought a pack at my local electronics place that originally came from an outfit called Velleman (http://www.vellemanusa.com/).  It had 10 m each of black and red, 5m each of eight other colors.  I think they called it a mounting wire kit.

They don't do retail, but have a "where to buy" feature on their web site.

Poking around in there makes me think they might have a lot of stuff that people in the BYOAC crowd might be interested in, but I guess that'd be true of any electronics place.

[megashock5]

How much do you need?

Hmmm..  I really only need 5-10 inches for each color, and I only need it for about half of the wires. I'll have to start trying to wire it again and see which colors need extended. I started, but I undid it when I realized a lot of them wouldn't reach. Didn't want to store the whole CP upside-down while I looked all over for wire.