smh@mhuxl.UUCP (henning) (04/04/86)
**** **** From the keys of Steve Henning, AT&T Bell Labs, Reading, PA mhuxl!smh I recently completed connecting a printer buffer between a Mac+ and an ImageWriter II. I was surprised to find out how Apple chose to make its 8-pin circular cable. Since I have interfaced the Mac+ to a number of DB-25 (RS232) peripherals I am posting this documentation. The following is the pinout of the stock Mac+ cables and custom cables I made to use the Mac+ with a Hayes modem and a printer MicroBuffer: First, I will show the connector pin assignments: _____ _________________ / V \ | | / 8 7 6 \ \ 1 2 3 4 5 / | 5 4 3 | \ 6 7 8 9 / > 2 1 < \___________/ \ _____/ Mac+ "mini-circular" DB-9 Connector 8-pin connector _____________________________________________________ | | \ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 / \ 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 / \_______________________________________________/ DB-25 Connector ============================================================================ The stock 8-pin circular cable to connect the ImageWriterII looks like: ImageWriterII(8-pin)---(M0187 Apple System/Peripheral-8 Cable)---(8-pin)Mac+ M0187 Circular-8 to Circular-8 "Apple System/Peripheral-8 Cable" 8-pin 8-pin Yes ladies and gentlemen, this cable 1 2 is not a conventional 1 goes to 1 etc. 2 1 cable but one of apples better ideas 3 5 for the rest of us. If you check 4 4 carefully you will see that this cable 5 3 is symmetric and will work regardless 6 8 of which way you plug it in. 7 7 8 6 shield shield ============================================================================== The stock cable to connect the Mac+ to earlier Mac cables looks like: Mac+(8-pin)---(Apple Part 699-0372 Mac+ Peripheral Adapter)---(DB-9)Peripheral Apple Part 699-0372 "Mac+ Peripheral Adapter Cable" 8-pin DB-9 1 7 DTR/DSR 2 6 DSR/DTR 3 9 TxD-/RxD- 4 3 SG 5 5 RxD-/TxD- 6 8 TxD+/RxD+ 7 N/C 8 4 RxD+/TxD+ shield 1 PG ============================================================================= My custom cable to connect my Hayes SmartModem 1200 was also used on the output of the Microbuffer and looks like this: ImageWriterII(8-pin)-(#699-0372)-(DB-9)-(custom cable A)-(DB-25)Printer Buffer Mac+ (8-pin)-(#699-0372)-(DB-9)-(custom cable A)-(DB-25)Hayes SmartModem 1200 custom cable A DB-9 DB-25 1 1 2 N/C 3 7* 4 N/C 5 2 6 20 7 8 8 7* 9 3 ========================================================================== The second custom cable I had to make to connect the MicroBuffer was: Mac+ (8-pin)-(#699-0372)-(DB-9)-(custom cable B)-(DB-25)Printer MicroBuffer custom cable B DB-9 DB-25 1 1 2 N/C 3 7* 4 7* 5 3 6 8 7 20 8 N/C 9 2