Custom Cables

Telco to Telco Cable

• Custom Telco Cable connects two patch panels or harmonicas
• Standard Telco cable is used for telephones, not data

Octopus Cables

If a device has a set of ports (e.g. a terminal server or fiber optic multiplexor) then an octopus cable is a convenient means of connecting it to a patch panel or harmonica. An octopus cable consists of a female telco connector connected to a set of connectors appropriate to the device in question.

We have custom octopus cables for various devices including:

• Canoga-Perkins fiber optic multiplexor, no hardware flow control
• Canoga-Perkins fiber optic multiplexor, with hardware flow control
• Xyplex MX1620 16-port terminal server
• SDSS telescope performance monitor (TPM)

Obsolete devices:

• Lantronics ETS/16UF terminal server (standard USOC octopus cable)
• Sun3 (1994)

Octopus cables for other devices are fairly easily worked out. See the "Derivation" section of several of the above documents for examples and a useful table.

Buying Custom Cables

Custom cables and adapters can easily be manufactured by custom cable wiring companies. These companies are so quick and inexpensive that it is usually a waste of time to create custom Telco cables or large numbers of adapters in house. The vendor I usually use in the Seattle area is DataPro.