Can anyone identify this cable?

[Bob Carruth]

While looking for an S-Video cable in my well organized (NOT) collection of 40 years of cables I came across this. From the condition of the cable tie it appears to have come with some piece of equipment but probably has never been used. It's male/male, somewhere around 30 inches long and has 5 pins and a center keyway on one end and 8 pins and no no keyway on the other.



Thanks.

[Bobby]

Not in my recollection Bob. Nothing to do with PCs to my knowledge, and not audio/video either. Hope somebody smarter than me out there!

[Chuck Engels]

Could be a Midi cable

[Bobby]

MIDI uses a 5-pin cable that looks a lot like (and may be identical) to the original IBM AT keyboard connector (not the newer PS/2 version).

[Chuck Engels]

How about a power supply cable?

[Steve Grisetti]

It kind of looks like an audio cable to me. Like for a PA system. But Chuck would certainly have recognized one of those!

[Bob Carruth]

It sure beats me. Over the years we've had a lot of different electronics including several CB radios, a very old (pre PC I think) Videonics Editmaker which I've long since deep sixed, various video games none of which are still around, a Pinnacle Studio 400 that definitely has no similar connection, and a couple of electronic keyboards. Most of my home theater equipment has been Sony but it's neither Control-L or Control-S.

Probably the best way to figure it out is throw it away. Whatever it was for should turn up almost immediately.

Since, from the condition of the cable tie it's pretty clear I never even undid it I'm not going to worry about it. I did finally undo it and checked the cable itself for markings. Nada.

Thanks for looking.

Edit: Steve, I did have a Radio Shack sound mixer that I used with Studio 400 to balance the sound from two camcorders for weddings. Wonder if it could have come with that?

[Chuck Engels]

I have a Videonics something or another that I used to edit VHS tapes back in 1989. Still have it around the house somewhere.
When I bought it at TEAM Electronics it was priced at $599 on sale for $179, it is now worth somewhere between $10 and nothing on eBay.
It was pretty cool for its time though, connect two VCRs, one to play and one to record. It did titles and everything but the whole process took days. I completed one or two tapes, that's all.

[Bob Carruth]

Chuck,

I remember. It was an agonizing process but worked. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when I got Studio 400. Once you had things tweaked you could get amazing frame accuracy. Depended a lot on having a good Hi 8 VCR. If I could get it to run on XP (wouldn't even run on 98) I'd probably use it to pre-edit my old Hi 8 tapes before converting to digital.

[sidd finch]

It almost kind of looks like it is a electronics cable for musical insturment like a keyboard controller. Looks like old Yamaha, Roland kind of stuff circa 1988-1992.

Team electronics in Algonquin...???

Sidd

[Chuck Engels]

Team electronics in Algonquin...???

Sidd

Team Electronics at Burnsville Center, the mall in Burnsville, Minnesota
They were a pretty big electronics chain in the 80's and early 90's, gave Radio Shack a run for the money.
I bought some really cool stuff at Team, ever heard of a Color Organ?

[Bob]

...heard of a Color Organ?

Not only heard of one, I built one from scratch back in the psychedelic sixties.

[Chuck Engels]

They were great, I built one too out of a kit and then built a really big one in 1979.

I got this thing, can't remember the name, at Team Electronics that connected between a stereo amplifier and a TV.
It was like a color ogan on steroids, you could control the colors and patterns, it was the greatest thing ever.
I left it at an apartment or somewhere by mistake many years ago, wish it was still around.
That thing was tons of fun, and the best song to play with it was James Taylor, You're Smiling Face.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

While looking for an S-Video cable in my well organized (NOT) collection of 40 years of cables I came across this. From the condition of the cable tie it appears to have come with some piece of equipment but probably has never been used. It's male/male, somewhere around 30 inches long and has 5 pins and a center keyway on one end and 8 pins and no no keyway on the other.

Thanks.

Did you ever find out what it was for?

[Bill Hunt]

Without counting pins and bars, it looks like a DIN cable. There were popular with audio sometime back. I still have a few that plugged my microphones and audio sources into an old Eumig dua-8 sound projector, and that connector looks *about* right. These were used on consumer stuff, as the pro-gear used what we called a "Tuchel," which was a heavier multi-pin connection.

I'll dig into the Hunt archive of ancient photo-cine curiosities, and see if I can locate some of these. I'll count the pins and bars and see if they match. Have not seen DIN connectors in some years. I think most were long replaced by XLR's and variations on RCA and different single prong jacks, of either the 1/4", or 1/8" size. DINs looked a bit like S-Video cables.

Hunt