Ugh. Honestly, I’d quit. And I actually like repairing things. You’d have to bring in “the guy” that just really enjoys this kind of repetitive and error-prone repair task.
I do cable a lot for my work. I have probably a mile of cat 6 at this point. I do fiber too, and yes I want a big chunk of undersea cable to make art with.
Edit, I accidentally replied my own comment:
Honestly we just throw chunks of fiber away. For our purposes, if it’s over 320 feet it’s going to be fiber anyway. I made the mistake one time of underestimating the amount of fiber I’d need and cost my company a lot of money. Now I always over order and the extra goes in the trash because it’s worthless. Next time you see guys doing fiber they might just have some scrap fiber to give you.
A few weeks ago I had a guy come up to me and jokingly say hey you should give me some of that copper line. I was feeling generous and gave him an unopened 1000ft box of cat6. Don’t tell my boss!
Edit edit- it was plenum, and the good stuff that goes for $300+ on eBay, please don’t tell my boss. I never sell it because I like my job.
kingly say hey you should give me some of that copper line.
Haa! that’s great. Imagine trying to harvest those 22g strande from the TP :)
I hit an auction for an electrician that went out of business, I got a bunch of remnant boxes for different coax for around $10. They all had between 100 and 500ft left. Most of it’s just RG8 but there’s some strange dual cable sat line in there that’s almost decent. I do a little home networking so I have a few hundred feet of cat 6. on hand and prob a half spool of cat5 that I’ll never use. And I have.
Mostly I want the big stuff because I see it but never actually get to touch it. It’s like I’d probably want a mainframe if I hadn’t spent plenty of time screwing with one.
I was rereading this thread today because I’m a cable dork and I thought you might like this bit I forgot to tell last night.
So on that job where I underestimated the fiber, after I made the shitty call to my boss to tell him how bad I fucked up, I cut it around the mid point to make it easier to rip out. I swear to god not even 15 minutes later my boss calls back and says hey whatever you do don’t cut it! Pull it all out and wrap it up we’ll use it for another job. I’m like, sure thing boss. Luckily he either forgot about it or more likely gave me a break.
Might as well scrap that 5 if you’ve got enough 6. They melt it away to conserve the copper. You might get some decent money. I’m typing with gloves because I’m about to go do ice breaker and snow for the hood. Good luck!
Heh, It was a piece of coax cable but it was really thick and bright yellow. I was about the same thickness as an average sized thumb. The whole thing ran at ten megabit.
It had a crap ton of shielding in it. It wasn’t the kind of cable you could just bend around a corner you had to give it room to bend. Because of the shielding and relatively low speed, it could run a very long distance (500 meters)
The vampire taps were these beige metal boxes with a stainless steel cradle on top that locked the cable in.
You used a tool to cut the hole in the cable, it was this screwdriver looking thing with a tiny little nub of a drill bit in the end. The nub of drill bit was the exact right length to drill down to the core of the cable and expose the center conductor. All you had to do was make sure that the hole was clear and then none of the ground mesh touched the center conductor or the pin that would have to slide into the hole.
After you drilled the hole you put the coax down into the cradle and turned a screw on the top, It would bite into the ground on one side and a little metal needle would touch the center conductor and the other side.
The coolest part was, shit was coming out all the time, and every time it was something amazing and futuristic. When the technology could barely do anything and all of a sudden you could do something new It was just magical. The advance is all seem kind of boring these days in comparison.
By the time I was doing the work the tech was already starting to get old. That particular job was kind of amazing. It was a giant distribution center with something like 3 miles of conveyor belts and the distributed Linux operating system worth one OS ran across 20 nodes.
We hired a contractor to come in and put fiber. But it was back when fiber was very unforgiving the project took forever to get turned up. They broke about as much as they ran. To be honest I’m not really sure why they bothered with the fiber, All the long distance runs in the warehouse we’re already overkill at 10 megabit.
For the most part they were just talking to an HP 3000 at serial speeds. All the office PCs and printers that needed better than 100 meg work condensed up in the front and could easily run on Ethernet.
Never heard of these?
those are boring, i want hunks of cable, undersea cable, backbone cable, local telco.
what can I say, I probably have issues :)
No, I get you. The artifacts for these you see at museums are impressive. The bigger ones would make some great bookends.
Those are truly amazing. Even the giant honking old stuff on the poles is kinda neat.
could you imagine splicing stuff like this?
Ugh. Honestly, I’d quit. And I actually like repairing things. You’d have to bring in “the guy” that just really enjoys this kind of repetitive and error-prone repair task.
Context: https://www.reddit.com/r/cablefail/comments/5novv2/3900_pair_underground_splice_that_got_wet_due_to/
All I see is a 4000 piece jigsaw puzzle :)
Actually, this one is less fun, just corrosion. good thing there’s enough slack to do it all again!
Ask the f’n Russians and Chinese, they might have a huge ass bundle hanging off an anchor.
ROFL, I’m certain of it!
I do cable a lot for my work. I have probably a mile of cat 6 at this point. I do fiber too, and yes I want a big chunk of undersea cable to make art with.
Edit, I accidentally replied my own comment:
Honestly we just throw chunks of fiber away. For our purposes, if it’s over 320 feet it’s going to be fiber anyway. I made the mistake one time of underestimating the amount of fiber I’d need and cost my company a lot of money. Now I always over order and the extra goes in the trash because it’s worthless. Next time you see guys doing fiber they might just have some scrap fiber to give you.
A few weeks ago I had a guy come up to me and jokingly say hey you should give me some of that copper line. I was feeling generous and gave him an unopened 1000ft box of cat6. Don’t tell my boss!
Edit edit- it was plenum, and the good stuff that goes for $300+ on eBay, please don’t tell my boss. I never sell it because I like my job.
Haa! that’s great. Imagine trying to harvest those 22g strande from the TP :)
I hit an auction for an electrician that went out of business, I got a bunch of remnant boxes for different coax for around $10. They all had between 100 and 500ft left. Most of it’s just RG8 but there’s some strange dual cable sat line in there that’s almost decent. I do a little home networking so I have a few hundred feet of cat 6. on hand and prob a half spool of cat5 that I’ll never use. And I have.
Mostly I want the big stuff because I see it but never actually get to touch it. It’s like I’d probably want a mainframe if I hadn’t spent plenty of time screwing with one.
I was rereading this thread today because I’m a cable dork and I thought you might like this bit I forgot to tell last night.
So on that job where I underestimated the fiber, after I made the shitty call to my boss to tell him how bad I fucked up, I cut it around the mid point to make it easier to rip out. I swear to god not even 15 minutes later my boss calls back and says hey whatever you do don’t cut it! Pull it all out and wrap it up we’ll use it for another job. I’m like, sure thing boss. Luckily he either forgot about it or more likely gave me a break.
Might as well scrap that 5 if you’ve got enough 6. They melt it away to conserve the copper. You might get some decent money. I’m typing with gloves because I’m about to go do ice breaker and snow for the hood. Good luck!
deleted by creator
The blast resistant stuff is pretty neat too. I just hate dealing with the gel/icky-pick when you have to terminate the cable.
I used to absolutely love putting vampire taps on thicknet.
Okay, now we’re going to put an AUI connector right here. First you’re going to need this drill, to drill a hole into the cable… Wait what?
You speak the language of the elders. I started with cat6, everything before that is Greek to me lol.
Heh, It was a piece of coax cable but it was really thick and bright yellow. I was about the same thickness as an average sized thumb. The whole thing ran at ten megabit.
It had a crap ton of shielding in it. It wasn’t the kind of cable you could just bend around a corner you had to give it room to bend. Because of the shielding and relatively low speed, it could run a very long distance (500 meters)
The vampire taps were these beige metal boxes with a stainless steel cradle on top that locked the cable in.
You used a tool to cut the hole in the cable, it was this screwdriver looking thing with a tiny little nub of a drill bit in the end. The nub of drill bit was the exact right length to drill down to the core of the cable and expose the center conductor. All you had to do was make sure that the hole was clear and then none of the ground mesh touched the center conductor or the pin that would have to slide into the hole.
After you drilled the hole you put the coax down into the cradle and turned a screw on the top, It would bite into the ground on one side and a little metal needle would touch the center conductor and the other side.
The coolest part was, shit was coming out all the time, and every time it was something amazing and futuristic. When the technology could barely do anything and all of a sudden you could do something new It was just magical. The advance is all seem kind of boring these days in comparison.
That does sound cool, it must have been pretty labor intensive. How long do you remember these things being used before they were phased out?
By the time I was doing the work the tech was already starting to get old. That particular job was kind of amazing. It was a giant distribution center with something like 3 miles of conveyor belts and the distributed Linux operating system worth one OS ran across 20 nodes.
We hired a contractor to come in and put fiber. But it was back when fiber was very unforgiving the project took forever to get turned up. They broke about as much as they ran. To be honest I’m not really sure why they bothered with the fiber, All the long distance runs in the warehouse we’re already overkill at 10 megabit.
For the most part they were just talking to an HP 3000 at serial speeds. All the office PCs and printers that needed better than 100 meg work condensed up in the front and could easily run on Ethernet.