o hai I've recently come into possession of a set of 8 I/O serial link cables (something with my school or something; I don't really know; it's a long story). As soon as I got these, I thought but one thing: I'm finally making my CALCnet hub!
- - -

So, I'm attempting to splice the ends onto my [little] breadboard. Each column has 30 port/socket/[insert wire here] things, but I don't plan to go over 27 (9*3); I can hold up to 3 full games of NetPong, Flourish, and Obliterate on the network (I might be forgetting something; lemme know if so). If I do go over, I may extend to 32 to allow things like Chat! or other programs.

Here's my issue: I'm having trouble fitting these frail wire bundles into the hole things on my breadboard. My current idea is to twist the inner bundles of the wires into a thick set, but it's inevitably futile, Mr. Anderson. [1 PWN Y00 W17H 73H M47R1X]

For those of you who are building/have built a CALCnet hub or have otherwise worked with TI link cable wiring:

1) How do you fit your wires into a breadboard? (I've heard soldering the tips ever so slightly may help.)
2) Is there one of the 3 lines that doesn't have a specific inner case? (I would assume it's the sleeve of the TRS tip; the others are colored red and white.)

Any other ideas/discussions/whatever you think of are welcome; I want to see what I can do with this hub.

Just to say now, I'm putting off globalCALCnet installation for a while; I still need to get some supplies for that. I will be putting it in eventually, however.

REV A: I forgot to mention that I'm starting with a four unit hub. I'll jump to 16 later.[/b]

1) A good way to get the ground wire to fit is to cut off a little section of breadboard compatible wire and solder it to the end of the wire bundle.
2) All of the lines have a specific inner case (red, white, ground)

However, if I were you, I wouldn't mess with cable splicing and would instead solder the leads of 2.5mm stereo ports for your hub. Then, you could simply connect the cables to the ports. Also, when you make your gCn device, use a 2.5mm stereo port to interface with the CALCnet hub.

Here's my favorite method:

1) Get 1-row, N-column straight IDC headers. Here's what they look like (except not broken up):



2) Solder the wires in red-copper-white order to the first three pins
3) Carefully snap off the three pins as a group
4) Repeat as necessary

I should also note that you solder to the short end of the header, and insert the long end into the board.

I'm going to see if I can try melting the ends of the wires together with a soldering iron, sans solder stuff, to make them easier to fit in the breadboard sockets.
Only one problem...
I - and I don't know how - do not have a soldering iron. :O
I work on waaay too many projects to not have one. I'm going to get one in the next few days.

imapc, the conductors in stranded wire don't melt at soldering iron temperatures, unfortunately (unless you're using a WAY overpowered iron, around 3000F instead of the normal 600-800F of a soldering iron). Make sure you get rosin-core, lead-free solder, preferably thinner rather than thicker, solder when you get your iron.