[Coco] Y cable construction

[Rogelio Perea]

On Sun, Apr 14 2013, Mike Rowen wrote:

Hi everyone. I'm attempting a simple Y cable. At the moment, I have a
> single 40 pin connector at the end of a 5.5" ribbon cable. The contacts
> check out good when I do a continuity test. I do not find any shorts.
>
> I plugged it into my CoCo 3 with a ROM pack connected via the ribbon cable
> and that works fine. When I switch to a Floppy controller, it generates a
> screen of garbage. The disk controller works fine when connected directly.
> I attached some alligator leads from the ground tabs on the controller cart
> to the CoCo 3 ground tabs, knowing better ground was required.
>
> Any suggestions to create a working Y cable (other than a multiple-pak!)?
>  <http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco>


The shorter the better, and by short I mean just enough to have the Y end
of the cable come free out of the CoCo's side port. Years ago I made such a
cable to be able to hook up both the CoCo Max II hi-res mouse interface and
the disk controller together, it was an ugly and stiff of flat cable
contraption but it worked. Three and a half inches is what you need to
clear out the CoCo port door, try working down your cable to 4" max - with
such a hardware kludge, one inch of ribbon wires is enough to make the
difference between a working and not-working Y-cable.


-- RP