Trevor Battle
Mike Sheward“Daddy what is this cable?”
“Oh that’s called a parallel cable. A DB-25 if I remember correctly.”
“What do you use it for?”
“Literally nothing.”
“Are you going to throw it away then?”
“Absolutely not.”
Sam I Am@SecureOwl analog modems might make a comeback
Speed demon 🇪🇺 🇳🇴🇺🇦🇵🇸@SamIAm @SecureOwl DB-25 parallel cable would be a printer cable. Pretty sure some point-of-sale machines still use them :-) for printing receipts.
Cruft builds up in our heads, just like in our attics.
Modems, at least the high-speed ones like 2400 baud (gosh) that I started out with, would be serial, and mostly with DB-9 connectors, rarely DB-25. :-) .
Will I ever NOT know this? Ctrl-S, XOFF, Ctrl-Q,XON. RTS/CTS and DSR/DTR lines. Ctrl-C, Break.
@#$%$%@^*%&* Connection Lost
@hakona @SecureOwl tap on CTRL-G a few times to get their attention. Hayes modems had the DB-25 connector.
pacanukeha❌ (seasonally appropriate remix)@SamIAm @SecureOwl and what if he needs to fire up the ol' dot-matrix to make a party banner?!
@SecureOwl @pacanukeha now you’ve strayed over to the Centronics cable
WhatsMyPot@SecureOwl LPT1 is a security blanket of GPIOs
Nick@SecureOwl You never know when you might desperately need a DB-25 cable.
Dave Irving@linuxfiend @SecureOwl That's why I keep mine.
If I happen upon a dot matrix printer, I'll be able to connect it, if I also find a PC with a parallel port.
Solarbird 
@SecureOwl I have a box where I keep cables and obsolete parts like SCSI interfaces and the like.
It has saved me and people I know _several times_ by letting me scrape obsolete hard drives and other storage devices including in one case literally _tapes_.
That box can live in the server room forever. ^_^
Dave Dawkins (D. Harrigon)@SecureOwl
Next you'll be telling me I should throw out my collection of RS232 interface leads.
Next you'll be telling me I should throw out my collection of RS232 interface leads.
Christopher Munz-Michielin🇨🇦@SecureOwl every time I throw out cables I think I'll never need, I inevitably end up needing one and buying it. I don't throw out cables anymore.
Dan Turner@SecureOwl just @ me next time.
I am Jack's Lost 404You should be able to twiddle at least 8 of those pins iirc... ah the days before Arduino...
John Dalton@SecureOwl @damonyoung You just never know when you may need to hook up a 30 year old computer to a fancy dot matrix printer in order to send something in Near Letter Quality.
Caddi@johndalton @SecureOwl @damonyoung I was on the verge of cracking, since we have three boxes, which include old modems and cables, etc. Then I read *near letter quality* and that's it, I'm in bits laughing.
Andyn305@johndalton @SecureOwl @damonyoung
if anyone watched the bernie maddoff series...he had a whole floor using them.
if anyone watched the bernie maddoff series...he had a whole floor using them.
John Gordon@SecureOwl one of my prouder moments involved a parallel cable. I had this old 300mhz Pentium MMX laptop I wanted to install modern Slackware on. No CD drive, no USB, I didn't have a 16-bit PCMCIA NIC, but w/ 4 floppies I could boot an installer env w/ a network stack & a few drivers including PLIP -- Parallel Line Internet Protocol. I ran a parallel cable to my Thinkpad & made a p2p net, exported Thinkpad cdrom over NFS and installed from the mounted CD over PLIP. Worked great!
Coty Rosenblath@jgor @SecureOwl Impressive digital Rube Goldberg.
eschapp@SecureOwl everyone has a cord box of shame.
James S@SecureOwl how else will you plug in your dot matrix printer and print all your NFT?
Tony Becker@SecureOwl a guy who I used to work with told me stories of whole rooms at Fermilab filled with obsolete tape drives and SCSI cables because they generated so much data so fast, they had to use tape back then, and tape formats evolved so frequently that the drives and formats proliferated. So for some things, there is a reason to keep them… but probably not a printer cable?
CrazyITGuy42@SecureOwl Definitely my junk box!
@SecureOwl I boosted this and then spent the next couple of hours just thinking about it. I have had a VGA to component video cable on my shelf for over 15 years, I know exactly where it is and have carried it with me through 4 international relocations. Notable is that at no point while owning the cable have I had products with either a VGA output OR a component input.
M.S. Bellows, Jr.@SecureOwl I understand nothing of this, and yet I agree 110/%.
Led By Gilded Fools@SecureOwl Quit lamenting the good ole' days and start filling that junk bin!
DB25 cables are in stock at Digikey, 2meter, only $233ea
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/switchcraft-inc/DB25M10DB25M/4248620
Ted DunningThe internet equivalent of baby food jars full of screws. And old coffee cans that hold something that seems to have rusted.
Just in case.
m0veax@SecureOwl I have multiple boxes of cables in my basement ✌️ every time my SO asks me to throw a part of that away, I just relocate the boxes.
Maybe I will never use some of those, but there have been multiple situations where someone needed an old legacy cable and that was the moment my SO recognized I didn't throw it away again 😅 But hey, the cable found a useful spot and is in use again. That's what counts for me.
Andreas Pettersson@SecureOwl You can use it to communicate with ChatLPT.
Memnochs@SecureOwl
Null-modem transfert !
Null-modem transfert !
Dave "ID is the New $$$" Birch@SecureOwl this is OUR HOUSE today
KontributeGaming@SecureOwl every comment in this thread 🏅😂
ScottinSoCal 🇺🇦 🕊 🏳🌈@SecureOwl
The other day I found a null modem cable.
The other day I found a null modem cable.
Benjamin Kwiecień 🇵🇸@SecureOwl You can get some good data transfer speeds with it. I think it's even fast enough for a login terminal
Michael@SecureOwl If you throw it away today, you'll suddenly need it next month
MartinDotNet@SecureOwl personal attacks are frowned up on here.
Drazi CrendravenYou can't just post things like that! Now I have to go see if there was a standard for parallel communications.
@SecureOwl Just @ me next time.
BlueDot🇺🇦@SecureOwl Now put it pack on the VCR where it belongs.
TheRetroSven (SMV)@SecureOwl Don't we all own this one box/drawer where we secretly keep our random kables for a brighter future 😅🤣👌
Jon Staebell
Eric Vitiello@SecureOwl @smallsco I feel seen
Jiva DeVoe@SecureOwl I feel seen.
Toon Van de Putte 🍉@SecureOwl I have boxes of those things. Various lengths too, 'cause you don't want to have to hook up a Matrix printer and the cable's too short.
Sandy Johnson@SecureOwl Literally me. I have a collection of RS-232 cables with different wiring and connectors not to mention gender adapters.
Claus Hillker@SecureOwl The thin wires inside are great for electronic hacking and prototyping- never throw obsolete cables out, recycle!
Ossi OH8HUB@SecureOwl My desk with two lab power supplies with DB-25 on front panel. I'll need a cable some day for some project to automatically control my power supplies 😁
HansvR@SecureOwl A HP Laserjet 4+ is still in use here. Guess what add-on card I had to put in my PC...
Stephen Fierbaugh@SecureOwl Add it to the box in the garage with the rest of them...
samwyse@SecureOwl I regret to admit that I have had this exact conversation.
Pam@SecureOwl @zwol this printer cable has been passed down in my family for generations