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Ribbon cable extender for the Firehose


Ed in SoDak

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I guess I'm one of the lucky few who has one of these. With all the new add-ons being developed, maybe now someone has found a source for the connectors and could produce this handy item.

 

Mine is about 36 inches, I haven't measured it in awhile. Long enough to put the firehose down on the floor with only the easily foldable ribbon cable connecting the PEB to the TI. Who needs that huge dongle laying on the desk, preventing the console from moving or breaking contact if it does move.

 

Those of us with PEBs need this!

-Ed

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The real problem with these is getting the connectors. KEL was the only company that made the male ends--and they've been out of production for long enough that all channel stocks have dried up. Even IEC is out of the male ends now, so they have to put a set of board fingers into a female connector to simulate a male end. I may have to make a finger board with a 44-pin header connector on it so that there is a stable end for new cables. That would be pretty easy to do, so long as the 44-pin male and female header connectors are plentiful. There are still enough of the 44-pin card edge connectors out there, so the other end would be covered too.

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I do not know why but i tried 2 of these cables and my PEB has problem in comunication with TI99... sometime all works well, and suddenly instead it find some problems and not recognize the PEB anymore.

never understand why

Edited by ti99iuc
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Mine's like 43 inches and it simply works. I just put my TI system back in action after about 4 years and some things got a little separated. That extender cable, for one thing. So I hooked it up the old way, and it simply sucked having that giant dongle hanging off the side. It kept wanting to succumb to gravity and pull away from the console.

 

So relocating my extender became a priority. When I finally found it, instant joy. I folded it under the console to run beneath it to the left, from thence off the desk and down to the floor, where gravity could no longer attract the dongle. Shoved it all out of the way. I just have not experienced any interference issues or loss of data that others speak of, and the connectors are supremely secure, even after all the years of use, storage in less-than-ideal conditions and several variations in how I route the cable about from one setup to the next.

 

Simple and it works. But it's also unobtainium. I wonder if the lucky guy who eventually gets my junk when I die (out of a dumpster, no doubt) will know what he has in this simple-looking, obsolete, pos cable?

 

I asked this question once before, some here may recall: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/224648-fire-hose-to-ribbon-cable/

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
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