Assembly Guide
though-style cable. The pinout can be found by opening the PICT resources of the Apple Modem Tool with ResEdit:
Figure 1: Modem Cable Pinout (from Apple). Differs from
Serial Printer Cable Pinout.
Figure 1 shows the pinout of commercially available cables like the Belkin® F2V088-06 "6FT MAC MODEM DIN8M/DB25M" cable, described as "This modem cable interfaces the Mac+/SE/IIGS and Mac series II computers to all Apple peripherals with 8 pin mini din serial ports."
Mac serial printer cables differ from Mac modem cables in that they are null-modem-style cables. Therefore a Mac modem cable cannot be used (alone) to connect a DeskWriter to a PC. Belkin makes a very small number of mini-DIN-8-to-DB-25 Mac serial printer cables (e.g. F2V026-06), but they are configured to connect
amini-DIN-8 Mac to printers with a DB-25 female connector. Unfortunately this is the opposite of what we are looking for.
It turns out that what is needed to connect a DeskWriter to a PC is
acombination of the Apple modem cable and a null-modem cable (fully wired). As a test, we connected a DeskWriter 660C to a PC's COM2 serial port (DB-9 male) with the following cables and adapters:
•Apple modem cable (min-DIN-8 male, DB-25 male)
•gender changer adapter (DB-25 female, DB-25
female)
•adapter (DB-25 male, DB-9 male )
•null modem cable (DB-9 female, DB-9 female)
Note A simpler cable can be assembled with, for example, an Apple modem cable and a null-modem cable with female DB-25 connectors on both ends.
If you'd like to make your own mini-DIN-8-to-DB-9 printer cable and you're handy with a soldering iron, refer to Figure 2.1 You can make one from an existing Mac serial printer cable and a female
2 | AG-2 Printing to a Mac-only HP DeskWriter® from a Windows® PC® |
