On Mon, 12 May 2003, Lord Isildur wrote:

> almost all the time, cables of this sort are straight through, pin for
> pin. thus, as long as the connectors match up, and the cable and
> connectors are of even vaguely the right impedance, things generally
> work (at least on most DEC gear, which is reassuringly robust against
> such things as weird cabling.. sun gear, on the other hand, requires
> magic even when the cables are _perfect_ :) Given that youre talking
> about 5 mhz scsi, the cable you describe sounds like a winner to me

For what it's worth, back in my college days (when money was very
tight), I had a lot of success with a hand crafted SCSI cable, made from
individual strands of telephone wire and a scavenged 50pin centronics
connector.  It worked surprisingly well.  I connected my second hand
CD-ROM drive with the SCSI controller that was on my "bargain bin"
Pro Audio Spectrum 16.  Being able to read CD-ROMs was such a cool
thing.  (All that storage!)

I'd often carry that drive down to the computer lab with me, and plug
it into a nearby outlet.  It served as my primitive semi-portable CD
player.  Alas, I digress.

-brian.