Anyone use a Cat-5 Cable Tester?

[beeiilll]

Here is an eBay link to one of the above testers in case anyone wants to check them out.
Nice big LCD display is easy to read for us "ole timers" and as I said this thing just works great.

I had two of the ones like Orville showed in his first post, but they both started giving me false readings within a couple of months of buying them. So I saw this one and it has been working fine for over 2 years now.

http://cgi.ebay.com/CAT5-RJ45-Network-Cable-Tester-Meter-Length-SC8108-q873-/260757371072?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb659b8c0

Bill

[Guest guest]

beeiilll wrote:

Here is an eBay link to one of the above testers in case anyone wants to check them out.
Nice big LCD display is easy to read for us "ole timers" and as I said this thing just works great.

I had two of the ones like Orville showed in his first post, but they both started giving me false readings within a couple of months of buying them. So I saw this one and it has been working fine for over 2 years now.

http://cgi.ebay.com/CAT5-RJ45-Network-Cable-Tester-Meter-Length-SC8108-q873-/260757371072?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb659b8c0

Bill

Bill, when you started getting "false readings", did you try changing out the 9V battery? Mine did that, but once I put in a brand new battery, it was fine and no errors. A false reading I got was the LED's would jump around, basically it wouold skip an LED (wouldn't light), it would go down the sequence but would go from 1 to 3 to 7 or the Master woukld show 1, remote 2, then remote may show 3, but nothing lit on the Master. Basically erratic readings. Like stated, I put in a brand new battery and it has been working fine since. But now I change my battery in the unit (depending on use) at least once every other month, sooner, if it starts getting erratic.



Is that anything like you experienced with yours?

And if you did change out the battery, did it still not work? (that would make me think the battery changed to was also not up to par. And I've bought brand new batteries that were not up to power right out of the package too. So I do have a battery tester in my arsenal as well to verify batteries are good before use.

[beeiilll]

Yea I did get the battery problem with them but the biggest thing that I had was that the tester would tell me a cable was good when it wasn't. Or I could plug a cable in to test, have it test good, and then plug it in again and come back as bad?
Both of the testers I had did it and since I need a good tester without having to pay thousands of dollars for my work, I just couldn't trust the one like you have.
The one I have now just works great so I am satisfied with it and I didn't think that it was all that expensive. Along with the ability to tract down problems with the length function saves me a lot of time.
I also sometimes get a little too carried away with a shovel in January trying to get the cables out of the ice and snow :shock: so this tester helps locate those shovel hits sometimes.

[Guest guest]

klb, I have got to admit I am confused by a lot of that.

To me, no matter what color the wire is, as long as each color wire of the same color goes from pin 1 from the beginning connector and ends at pin 1 of the end connector, and each color follows through in the same manner lying side by side and then bundled in a sleeve or shrink tubing, it should work. I have built cables for years both commercially and for the Military and never had a test failure when checked. Sometimes when you're pulling these wires through the sleeves, yes, they do and can become "twisted" or "crossed", you hope they don't, but it happens. But it has never been an issue that I was ever made aware of unless the wires becamse so severely wrapped up, that is twisted so bad the cable wouldn't work due to those interefernce issues you talked about (I did understand the interference part).

Now if that's what you mean, yes, I understand that, but 1 or two wires twisted over each other should not be a problem, from what I recall, been a while since I built a cable now, the specs allowed for 2 or 3 twists, more than that and you had to pull the wire back out and try to reseat it through the sleeving or shrink tubing. But we checked for that prior to sending it off to inspection and corrected it, if it had more than 3 twisted wires in there.

So in your scenarioos above, you're saying just one wire crossed or twisted over another is going to cause a significant issue? Because I have got to say, working in the assembly field for over 30+ years, I was always taught up to 3 twists were an acceptable issue. Has this been changed now to 0 or no twists at all are, so even one twist now is no longer permitted?

Like said, I have not been in the field now for quite a few years(5-6 years) and when I was, every year we were put back in training classes or even throughout the year if a significant change in assembly processes were done. And I haven't been in one of those classes in about 5-6 years now, so things in all that time could have changed that I don't and wouldn't know about, because I just haven't kept up with it, since I'm not working in it.

[Guest guest]

Bill I do like that tester you showed, mainly because of the BIG LCD Display. I could sure yuse one like that. But will have to wait on getting a new tester like that until I can get back into the workforce.



Don't have to worry about shovel hits or ice and snow here in my neck of the woods, we sometimes get ice, but that may only be for a few hours in one day, then not again for a few days or a month or a few months later and then again only for a few hours and it's gone. Rain is mostly what I have to worry about.



So far this "cheapo" tester I have has been reliable, but I'll replace it for a much nicer and better one, probably the one you have, when I can.

[-klb-]

Power wiring? Or voice or data wiring?

Have you ever had multiple phone lines in a house where the wiring was simple parallel conductors? Sometimes you get enough coupling between wires that you can hear the calls on the other lines. I experienced that in a rental house back in college, where cable intended for 9 pin RS232 applications had been used to wire from the outside box to the distribution hub in the attic.

Twisted pair cable was first developed for voice. The pair of wires being twisted is not a bad thing for voice or data, it is a good thing. The two wires for a phone line are intentionally twisted around each other, then laid parallel to the other twisted pairs. Just this simple act of twisting the wires for one circuit together isolates the circuits from coupling to each other.



But this has been common practice for voice for decades. As Ethernet entered the scene, and got faster and faster, both the number of twists per inch, the consistency, and accuracy have gotten higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

I promise you that the Test Um cable tester can distinguish between the two wiring pinouts I showed above, even though they are exactly the same when tested for wire map and conductivity. And the thread I had linked above shows at least one LOR user who has documented a functional difference between the two as well. RS-485 generally works best when the data wires are a single twisted pair.

[Jaren Ririe]

I ran my Cat line, but now need to add the connectors to the end. Can't seem to find a diagram that shows what colors match with what. Anybody?

Also, I'm connecting to a box on the wall that doesn't have the multi colored wiring. I need the diagram to match colors. Help???

[Guest guest]

Did both types of wiring. Like said, I'm from the "old days" of this, so things have changed and made improvements. I just wasn't aware of them! Thanks for the explaination.



It does seem that from what I read of the description of the SC-8108 that Bill posted, that it also does the same thing as the Test Um tester you descrbed. And I definitely would like a nice large display to see what's what.