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From: frechett@boulder.Colorado.EDU (-=Runaway Daemon=-)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: serial connectors
Message-ID: <28988@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 31 Oct 90 07:50:43 GMT
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Reply-To: frechett@snoopy.Colorado.EDU (-=Runaway Daemon=-)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
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After perstering enough people around here about 2mm connectors.. my name was
reffered to someone who deals with odd size connectors all the time.  (he is
working on supersmall hard drives)  He happened to have two 50 hole 2mm spacing
connectors.  That is a very thin connector with 25 pins over 25 pins.  Needless
to say, I cut it up into 5, 4 hole over 4 hole connectors.  I found that even
with the extra 4 holes these things are so small that they still fit in the
port on the hp.  I promptly put together 2 PC/MODEM to hp connectors and one 
hp to hp connector.  (my friend and I transfer all the time)  
No, I don't have any of these beauties to sell, but I wanted to say that this
person gave me some good info on how to track donw more of these connectors..
In case anyone cares. They are made by dupont (BERG)   ;)    and the part
number for the connector with staight pins out the back is 88333-050
and the other one that has bent pins out the back which I have not used at all
yet is part number 86455-150.    I get the funny impression that these are a 
bit more available than 4 pins connectors by themselves.  It is no problem at
all to cut the 25 pins across down to 5 4 pin connectors, so it might be worth
while to look into the availabily of them in your area.  I was also told that 
elco is supposed to have some nice ones and samtech (dunno if sp is right) is 
going to have them real soon.  I was also told to check with the local reps.
They get paid to hand out free samples. If you tell them that you need to check
out a 2mm connector for a school project (robot or somethine ;)  they are
likely to dig something up and give it to you.  As I said, they get paid to do
this.  

To the person that suggested that all this is a waste of time... I know of 
three people that would disagree with you tommorow when I get them their
cables, and I truely look forward to my 9600 baud hp-hp connection. I found
that the IR runs the batteries down faster than wire as I could still do wire
transfers well after my battery had gotten too low for IR.  I don't think that
hp sells anything like an hp-hp cable and I made mine in a whopping 15 minutes.
and the other PC-hp cable in 10. Another couple and I could sell them.. (I
don't plan to, unless I had some spare time, energy, and money, which I don't
right now).  

Oh and something else that I should mention about the construction was that I
moved to a different type of wire.  Found a nice 20 strand 10 color flat wire
that can easily be cut into 5 4 strand wires.  This is also the finer gauge
wire than normal.  The spacing is 1.5mm.  Perfect for what we are doing.  As
long as I don't get any noise at 9600 baud I should be ok.  But, do you notice
a certain symetry here?  5 connectors out of one and 5 wires out of one... ;)
Cuts down on production costs if anyone is interested.  

Hope someone can gleen some useful information from this post.

	ian
--

-=Runaway Daemon=-