The XA1541 active cable

Important notes

  • You definitely need BSV52 transistors and 4.7 kOhm resistors for this cable, different parts may make the cable inoperable.

Construction

You need the following parts to build this cable:
  • One solderable 6-pin male DIN plug (Commodore serial plug)
  • One solderable 25-pin male plug (PC parallel plug)
  • Four BSV52 transistors
  • Four SMD 1206-style 4.7 kOhm resistors
  • A shielded 4-wire or unshielded 5-wire cable of, preferably at most, 2 meters
Step 1. Solder one end of the cable onto the DIN plug.

Step 2. Solder those wires, that don't go through an enhancer, on the other end of the cable onto the parallel plug. These include the following connections:

DIN plug Parallel plug
 2, GND  18-25, GND
 3, ATN  13, SelectIn
 4, CLK  12, PaperEnd
 5, DATA  10, Ack
 6, RESET  11, Busy

Step 3. Build the enhancer bridges, consisting of one transistor and one resistor each, between the appropriate pins of the parallel plug. These include the following connections:

Parallel plug Parallel plug
 13, SelectIn   1, Strobe
 12, PaperEnd  14, AutoFeed
 11, Busy  17, Select
 10, Ack  16, Init

The collector of the transistor should be pointing towards the pins in the left column of the table. The base of the transistor should be pointing towards the pins in the right column of the table; this is also the place for the resistor. The emitter of the transistor should be grounded.

Circuit diagram:

[XA1541 active cable]

You can find the description of all parts used on the diagrams at the legend page.

Source: The Joe Forster-STA homepage

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