Exactly. I finally built a few of Rick Shear's tpdd cables (and they work great btw, thank you Rick!), and they are based around a small pcb that solders directly to the back of a db25 connector, and so it requires a shell.
It works fine in a 102 or 200 but not a 100. That grey hood you showed is similar to what I did for one of my cables with a normal hood. I cut away the lip on a common hood enough to allow the plug to fit, and replaced the retainer screws with flat/conical heads pointing the other way, so the connector is now bolted to the hood instead of held by that lip. The 100, 102, 200 don't have nuts on the connectors for retaining screws anyway, so no loss. But carving up a regular hood like that is a bit ugly, not to mention annoying to do, and annoying to have no better suggestion to write down in a doc, and I didn't just want to make one for myself, I wanted to make several to make available via Greg and arcadeshopper, and I wanted to polish up some build directions taking what Rick posted a little further to make something a little more step by step. I'm debating actually pouring resin or something and making a home made molded plug. Might be kind of cool because it could be clear, and show off Rick's pcb, including his name on the silk screen. Another thing I might try is just ignore the fact that the pcb is designed to solder to a connector. Instead, just take a common 9-25 modem cable, cut off the db9, solder the wires to the right pads on the pcb, solder the tpdd side as normal, epoxy or zip-tie both cords to the pcb for strain-relief, and enclose the whole thing in heavy heat shrink. So you have a lump floating in the middle of the cable, and the plug in the M100 is a molded plug which fits. Another idea is make a different pcb which goes on the tpdd end instead of the m100 end. A crimp-on 2x4 idc (he said, redundantly, given what idc stands for) plug does not fit in the hole in a tpdd, but maybe a female 2x4 pcb header does. If you could just extend a female pcb header to stick up off a pcb surface just a little more, then you could have a small pcb that sits flat against the back of the tpdd, and has a plug that sticks in to the tpdd. That would eliminate the *excruciating* process of crimping individual tiny dupont connector pins I'm using right now. Then just cut the db9 off a common modem cable and solder that to the pcb, and you have a full cable that was much easier to build, and which fits in a M100. (Rick's original cables were easy enough for him to build only because he used FB100 cables to provide the tpdd plugs. I'm going for more available parts.) Only remaining problem there is some sort of enclosure for the pcb. Maybe the 2x4 header can be a right-angle type, and so the pcb sticks out 90 degrees from the tpdd in line with the cable. Then, assuming the whole pcb is small so it doesn't stick out too far, and give it a little dog-bone shape, you could zip-tie the serial cable to it and enclose the whole thing in simple heat shrink. I don't know if you can get a right-angle header to stick out far enough from the side of a pcb to allow it to reach in to the pins in the tpdd though. And I don't think there's enough room for the pcb to extend inside the hole either. Or just make a pcb that is designed to float in the middle of a cable. That seems the most obvious and simplest, but it WOULD be great to find an answer for the tpdd plug that doesn't require crimping dupont style pins. -- bkw On Sat, Jun 1, 2019, 4:45 PM Mike Stein <mhs.st...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks, Dan! > > That *cable* would certainly fit an M100, but Brian is looking for just a > shell to go around a bare connector; maybe he wants to make a one-piece USB > to 25-pin cable with the USB electronics inside the DB25 connector. > > In any case, the problem is that unlike molded cables most shells have > lips on the sides that grip the connector, and those lips keep the > connector from fitting into the recessed connector on an M100. > > m > > ----- Original Message ----- > > *From:* Dan Higdon <therealh...@gmail.com> > *To:* m...@bitchin100.com > *Sent:* Saturday, June 01, 2019 3:35 PM > *Subject:* Re: [M100] dsub 25 hood that fits > > I bought one of these from Amazon, and it fits my 102. But it's going to > my PC's COM port, not a USB port, so maybe this isn't what people are > looking for. > StarTech.com 10 ft Cross Wired DB9 to DB25 Serial Null Modem Cable - F/M > > On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 2:19 PM Mike Stein <mhs.st...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Looks like a worthy 3d printing project... >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> *From:* Mike Stein <mhs.st...@gmail.com> >> *To:* m...@bitchin100.com >> *Sent:* Saturday, June 01, 2019 2:36 PM >> *Subject:* Re: [M100] dsub 25 hood that fits >> >> This is what I use(d) but it appears that Souriau hasn't made them for >> quite a while: >> >> >> Why not just stick one of these on a 'normal' shell: >> >> m >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> *From:* Brian White <bw.al...@gmail.com> >> *To:* Model 100 Discussion <m100@lists.bitchin100.com> >> *Sent:* Saturday, June 01, 2019 1:19 PM >> *Subject:* [M100] dsub 25 hood that fits >> >> Anyone ever find a dsub 25 hood that fits in the serial port openeing on >> M100? >> >> -- >> bkw >> >>
