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Splicing a DB25 cable

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dirkomatic:

For those of you who have spliced into a DB25 cable to wire your controls...  Are the wires inside colored or anything?  What is the best way to keep track of the individual wires for the pinout?

mvsfan:

personally I wouldnt use solid color ribbon cable for wiring anything. But if you really must, get a wire tagging book.

with that said, some specialty companies make rainbow ribbon where every wire is a different color. Buy some of that. it solves so many problems later on when your wire tags glue dries up and they fall off.

or if your in the construction industry and are fortunate enough to be working on a building thats getting an elevator, try to get some of the elevator wire scraps off of the guy. i did. they just throw small lengths away.

its #22, its one cable assembly, and its stranded and has from 30-50 wires, and each one is a different color.

i used it for the Cp to the Ipac. neat thing is that its all one cable so you only have to strip off enough to spread it out across the cp to all your buttons, and then to the ipac, you break it out in other words, and it makes for a very neat installation.



mvsfan:

oh also, with that said, dont ever use a solid wire like Cat 5 to wire up your cabinet even though its tempting dont ever use it on anything you plan on moving or shaking or taking apart later (and you will do this.)

solid wire has no flexibility at all and tends to break at your solder points or right at your spade connectors.

also thats one more thing i do for reliability. I dont use spade connectors for my control panels. they tend to get a layer of oxide between them or they get loose and then the buttons no longer work. I solder everything in. If your handy with it its also no problem to unsolder it.

also whatever you do dont try and solder the other end to your Ipac. If the Ipac (or insert keyboard controller here) fails, your screwed.

with that said ive also employed many quick connects in my system so everything breaks apart easy as a unit.

ive tried though to modulate everything as much as possible.

for example, if the monitor goes bad, it has quick connects and easy access from the front to pull it out and service it but if its really bad or something, the quick connect plug is soldered to the monitor itself so i will have to solder it on the new one before i plug it back in.

its very good indeed in my opinion, to have your whole cabinet break apart in sections for service. You just cant use too many molex connectors.  But when you have 60 or more wires all hooked up with cheap quick connects, it gives too much room for corrosion or loosening, and subsequently, failure.


dirkomatic:

Ummm...  I didn't say ribbon cable.  I plan on using DB25 connections for a lot of stuff...  That said, I found an old printer cable I had and it looks like the wires inside are colored as I thought they should be...  should make it much easier for what I need to do.  Thanks!

jholman76:

I like to use a multimeter to figure out what wire is what using the continuity setting. Just strip the wire and connect that to one of the leads. Poke around with the other lead on the pins until you find it. or vice versa.

http://www.texsoinstruments.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/fluke-116.jpg

its the setting 3rd from the bottom. it looks sorta like two arrows pointing at each other. (just to the right of the setting this meter in the pic is on.)

When the circuit is complete, it makes a small beeping noise. Its useful for testing fuses, etc and this.

EDIT: here is a tutorial:
http://www.ladyada.net/library/metertut/continuity.html

joe

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