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Thanks for that Pogi!

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Paint your old laptop!

[cyberhh]

You should also be able to attach a battery to one end and affix leds to the other end and test that way - quicker and easier. You could use two or three leds to test for crossover or a short.
Just a thought

uhh I was just wonder why you don't use two small hubs
seems to work just right

Melmo...can't afford to have two hubs lying around just to test a cable. Like I said, I'm a tightwad ;D.

[cyberhh]

two hubs will not neccessarily test correctly. I have had some strange errors regarding hubs, besides, hubs require a crossover cable for HUB to HUB communication, or a crossover port, two power outlets and desk space - you also have to go to two different locations to check if your drops are good. With a loopback it fits in your toolkit, uses batteries, can be used to test cable drops and jacks, and you can test from one end.

Very good details, i am going to try this out

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We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

[thirdfey]

Originally posted by melmo:
uhh I was just wonder why you don't use two small hubs
seems to work just right

how would you test to see if a crossover worked? you would need atleast one of the hubs to have an uplink port than. Plus, whats the fun in that? You don't get to tinker with anything and isn't that what we're all about, tinkering in our spare time to see if we can make the microsoft operating systems run. its like trying to make a harley run

[u8drtsox]

Pogi. The concept is great and simple. You described it well. My only thought here is if you're a tight *** why did you buy an Ohm meter? A simple little led tester sold for about $5 at Sears or Radio Shack will tell you if you have continuity right? I'm a tight *** as well so I think the $11.00 wire tester will do fine for me. Now I have to go to Radio Shack.....Just can't ask the staff for any help. Where do they find those people???

[This message has been edited by u8drtsox (edited November 02, 2000).]

Originally posted by u8drtsox:
My only thought here is if you're a tight xxx why did you buy an Ohm meter? Now I have to go to Radio Shack.....Just can't ask the staff for any help. Where do they find those people???

The ohmmeter was a Christmas present (so my tightwad reputation is intact). As far as the comment about the staff at Radio Shack...that's why I gave the part number for the blocks in my original post

[This message has been edited by Pogi (edited November 02, 2000).]

You know if you take your pay rate and multiply it by the time it took you to buy and build your cheapometer and spent that time working you might find that you could have bought one and have had a few $ extra and a lot of extra time as well?

I just wanted to point out that being cheap can actually cost you more in time that it is worth.

Talk about Radio Shack staff??!! I just did a search on Radio Shack's website for the White surface mount jack and it came up as a telephone extension cord, 25 ft. to be exact! Oh, well... at least it is still white! BTW, the code number is still good for the ivory one (at least for now).

Paladin Tools has a nice little multi-cable tester that runs about $100 at Fry's. Sure, it's a bit much, but it tests coax, RJ-45, RJ-11, RJ-12, USB, DB-9, DB-15, DB-15HD, DB-25, and Centronics-36. And it can test any combination of these (like this weird DB-25 to RJ-45 cable) It not only tells you if the cable is good, but what the wiring pattern is. (Very handy around here, since we use 5 different types of RJ-45 cables) They also have a Mac version, as well as adaptors for testing IDE, SCSI, and other cables, but I haven't seen these in Fry's.

Expensive, but it's paid for itself already.



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Captain Troy D. Pack Rat
`akbar Press

If you're furry and you know it, hug the mouse!

my you don't just has some old 4 or 5 port 10 base hubs lying around doing nothing ??

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by ilovetheusers:
You know if you take your pay rate and multiply it by the time it took you to buy and build your cheapometer and spent that time working you might find that you could have bought one and have had a few $ extra and a lot of extra time as well?

I just wanted to point out that being cheap can actually cost you more in time that it is worth. </font>

I apply this rule to all situations in my work. Example: screw around for 5 hours with a crummy component, or replace the component with something decent. Give the customer these two options with the cost for each, and your life becomes much easier. And the customer is informed.

I saw a cool tester that the tech who wired our office had: it had an LCD display and would test the line to see if it was good for 100 megabit network.

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If it ain't broke, and you try to fix it anyway, then it WILL need fixing!

[This message has been edited by MacGyver (edited January 15, 2001).]