Re: Cable colors and urban legends
On 6/2/23 22:41, Stefan Monnier wrote:
5~10 years ago, I cut the end off of a bad red SATA cable.
To my surprise, the copper conductor was disintegrating as Gene describes.
Unbelievable.
Somebody botched their chemical engineering.
Cool: second first hand account. Thanks.
So there is at least some anectodal evidence.
I also found a potentially related reference to a 70's problem
with corrosive wire insulation at https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/304699/Oxidation+of+copper+wire
but still can't find anything more concrete (and that one doesn't
mention the insulation's dye as the culprit).
Stefan
I'm convinced after chasing electrons to make them do work since the
middle of WW-II, that the dye is the most likely suspect. The evidence
is admittedly thin, but its there by the fact that other colors may
flex, fatigue from flexing and fail but they are still copper colored
when cut into. In broadcasting, which I switched to in late '63 after
getting a 1st phone in '62, dependability is the target and while its
not even the biggest reason for replacing a cable, I have probably
replaced half a mile of it that no longer said it was conductive, 5 or 6
feet at a time. I've never been reticent about calling a maker who
screwed up and telling them so. The surprising thing is that of course
there are folks who've never made a mistake, those soon get crossed off
my procurement list. However 90% of such phone calls have been met with
at first surprise, and then thanked for alerting them to what could be a
costly warranty make good. Those folks filtered to the top of my srcs
lists. Some of my hunches have worked very well if only by serendipity.
As a mid market CE, we often would buy yesterdays tech from folks in the
top 10 markets, so we bought one of the legendary Grass Valley 300-3A/B
production video switchers, this one from the JCPennys production house
in NYC. It had some problems, mostly corrosion from NYC's poor air. Chip
legs turned black, so we bought tarnex by the pint. Several times.
It also had a serial interface, so I wrote an e-disk that worked better
than grasses $20,000 item, ran it on an old coco2 with floppy drives.
Once I had that working I could ask a circuit to do something and see
its response. This thing was full of 4 bit wide fifo's, 2 to make an 8
bit byte.
They were out to lunch and usually late getting back. Called Grass, it
was special and they were out. Sorta memory, so I called AMD next,
yeah, we made them for grass but we've given then a JEDEC number now,
how many do you want at $1.90 ea, so I ordered a stick of 25. Fixed it
right up. I could go on with my war stories, but I'm boring the list
with off topic rattling. Just suffice to say I've BT & DT many times.
Take care & stay well Stefan.
Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/>
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