Wiring Tip

[dungbeetle46]

was looking for wire to wire up my cocktail cab and wanted to keep it nice and neat, I had a heap of old wire lying around, mostly the same color etc
then I found I had a heap of old parallell printer cables, after cutting of the end I had around 36 wires all different colors in a nice neat harness.
So if you havent thought of it, use a printer cable, you can pick these up almost anywhere for next to nothing.
1 5ft cable wired my whole cocktail cab both sides.

[dkubarek]

that is very sweet. do you have a shot of the completed wiring job?

[SavannahLion]

Well, if we're going to be discussing wiring harnesses, might as well run with it. 

Using a female/male parallel, serial or other corresponding mating plug, you can cut the cable in half (or whatever) and wire one half into your CP and to other half into your cab. This gives you a "quick disconnect" that allows you to pull the CP off for proper repairs or a swappable cab design.

With a little soldering and some dumpster diving you can scrounge up a busted parallel port printer, scanner or other device to mate to the impossible to find mate to the printer cable. Desolder the port on the back, apply in a nice clean fashion to your CP or cab and you have yourself a nice clean interface. A little bit more work than the above, but just as cheap.

If you live or work in an office district, keep an eye out for renovations. They'll often pull (and hopefully discard) the old Cat3 or Cat5 wiring. Not as clean as the above two, but they yield lots of cabling. I snagged enough discarded Cat3 this way to jump start my breadboard circuits.

[dungbeetle46]

Using a female/male parallel, serial or other corresponding mating plug, you can cut the cable in half (or whatever) and wire one half into your CP and to other half into your cab. This gives you a "quick disconnect" that allows you to pull the CP off for proper repairs or a swappable cab design.

I like that idea

[dungbeetle46]

that is very sweet. do you have a shot of the completed wiring job?

no I dont I made the cab for a friend and its already gone, I will make another though so will make sure I take pics
cheers

[Lilwolf]

btw, I do this (but with 25pin passthrough serial cables... the ones with all 25 pins going through)

it also has the advantage that I buy a bunch of male - male cables that I use for extra control panels.  Cheap on ebay (3 bucks a cable...) and works well.

but what I would recomment doing is make sure you can crimp the ends on tight (and definately go with crimped ends)... if you can't crimp securily, you will constantly have problems.

[matman]

What is the gauge of these wires?  Are they so small they are kind of a pain to work with?  (i'm guessing not since multiple people are chiming in with similar ideas)

[SavannahLion]

What is the gauge of these wires?  Are they so small they are kind of a pain to work with?

Yeah, they are a bit of a pain to work with. Not so much that they're difficult in and of themselves (I frequently use that gauge for signal trace jumps) just that the scale of everything else you're working with is so much larger.

For example, Lilwolf recommends crimping and this is one area that most people encounter problems. The connectors work with a larger gauge wire than what these are. So most people either strip back extra then fold the wire back once or twice, then crimp. Others eschew crimping entirely and go with soldering (the reasoning for soldering isn't always related to wire gauge).

(i'm guessing not since multiple people are chiming in with similar ideas)

It's likely more to do with the fact that this is are really well known techniques. It's one of the very first ideas I explored when I was fiddling with CP designs. I replied because I kind of felt bad that no one said hi to the OP.

[Honzo]

Before i get flamed, i'm bumping this thread because I have a similar question and don't want to start a new thread....

Can someone post any good sites to buy bare wire like this?  I've cut open cables like phone cables and such in the past for these sort of projects, but I think i want to wire the whole thing with 18 or 20 gauge, mostly the same color, but radioshack only seems to carry solid core which is never any good.

[koz319]

Here's an old thread on using parallel/centronics style connectors on swappable panels.  (Somewhat off topic, but thought someone may still find it useful. Nice thing about these is no soledring on the connectors themselves.)

Link

Koz

[Vicious Burger]

Well, if we're going to be discussing wiring harnesses, might as well run with it. 

Using a female/male parallel, serial or other corresponding mating plug, you can cut the cable in half (or whatever) and wire one half into your CP and to other half into your cab. This gives you a "quick disconnect" that allows you to pull the CP off for proper repairs or a swappable cab design.

With a little soldering and some dumpster diving you can scrounge up a busted parallel port printer, scanner or other device to mate to the impossible to find mate to the printer cable. Desolder the port on the back, apply in a nice clean fashion to your CP or cab and you have yourself a nice clean interface. A little bit more work than the above, but just as cheap.

2 good ideas,I was trying to think of a way to do a quick disconnect and didnt think of that one. I have a couple of those cables. Question though,when you cut it in half and 'mate' the male and female plugs together,wont the wires be the wrong way round?