I do cable a lot for my work. I have probably a mile of cat 6 at this point. I do fiber too, and yes I want a big chunk of undersea cable to make art with.
Comment on Can't throw me off the scent
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 days agothose are boring, i want hunks of cable, undersea cable, backbone cable, local telco.
what can I say, I probably have issues :)
MutilationWave@lemmy.world 2 days ago
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
kingly say hey you should give me some of that copper line.
Haa! that’s great. Imagine trying to harvest those 22g strande from the TP :)
I hit an auction for an electrician that went out of business, I got a bunch of remnant boxes for different coax for around $10. They all had between 100 and 500ft left. Most of it’s just RG8 but there’s some strange dual cable sat line in there that’s almost decent. I do a little home networking so I have a few hundred feet of cat 6. on hand and prob a half spool of cat5 that I’ll never use. And I have.
Mostly I want the big stuff because I see it but never actually get to touch it. It’s like I’d probably want a mainframe if I hadn’t spent plenty of time screwing with one.
MutilationWave@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Might as well scrap that 5 if you’ve got enough 6. They melt it away to conserve the copper. You might get some decent money. I’m typing with gloves because I’m about to go do ice breaker and snow for the hood. Good luck!
MutilationWave@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I was rereading this thread today because I’m a cable dork and I thought you might like this bit I forgot to tell last night.
So on that job where I underestimated the fiber, after I made the shitty call to my boss to tell him how bad I fucked up, I cut it around the mid point to make it easier to rip out. I swear to god not even 15 minutes later my boss calls back and says hey whatever you do don’t cut it! Pull it all out and wrap it up we’ll use it for another job. I’m like, sure thing boss. Luckily he either forgot about it or more likely gave me a break.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 day ago
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Those are truly amazing. Even the giant honking old stuff on the poles is kinda neat.
could you imagine splicing stuff like this?
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 day ago
could you imagine splicing stuff like this?
Ugh. Honestly, I’d quit. And I actually like repairing things. You’d have to bring in “the guy” that just really enjoys this kind of repetitive and error-prone repair task.
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
All I see is a 4000 piece jigsaw puzzle :)
Actually, this one is less fun, just corrosion. good thing there’s enough slack to do it all again!
FrowingFostek@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The blast resistant stuff is pretty neat too. I just hate dealing with the gel/icky-pick when you have to terminate the cable.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I used to absolutely love putting vampire taps on thicknet.
Okay, now we’re going to put an AUI connector right here. First you’re going to need this drill, to drill a hole into the cable… Wait what?
FrowingFostek@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You speak the language of the elders. I started with cat6, everything before that is Greek to me lol.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Heh, It was a piece of coax cable but it was really thick and bright yellow. I was about the same thickness as an average sized thumb. The whole thing ran at ten megabit.
It had a crap ton of shielding in it. It wasn’t the kind of cable you could just bend around a corner you had to give it room to bend. Because of the shielding and relatively low speed, it could run a very long distance (500 meters)
The vampire taps were these beige metal boxes with a stainless steel cradle on top that locked the cable in.
You used a tool to cut the hole in the cable, it was this screwdriver looking thing with a tiny little nub of a drill bit in the end. The nub of drill bit was the exact right length to drill down to the core of the cable and expose the center conductor. All you had to do was make sure that the hole was clear and then none of the ground mesh touched the center conductor or the pin that would have to slide into the hole.
After you drilled the hole you put the coax down into the cradle and turned a screw on the top, It would bite into the ground on one side and a little metal needle would touch the center conductor and the other side.
The coolest part was, shit was coming out all the time, and every time it was something amazing and futuristic. When the technology could barely do anything and all of a sudden you could do something new It was just magical. The advance is all seem kind of boring these days in comparison.
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Ask the f’n Russians and Chinese, they might have a huge ass bundle hanging off an anchor.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
ROFL, I’m certain of it!