Aftermarket cables for LC slot Apple II card - feeling for interest

[chalackd]

G'day all! As I had mentioned once before I have been kicking around the idea of making a few replacement cables to fit the Apple II card for Macintosh LC series systems. As any interested party should know these (original) cables tend to sell on that popular auction site for around the $100 range, which I find to be an entirely exorbitant price, though all the power to 'em since people seem willing to pay.

I finally found myself an Apple II card (Along with a complete LC, keyboard and mouse, passed on the monitor regretfully due to shipping cost), and once it arrives I plan on at least verifying the design for a replacement cable.

My plan so far deviates from the original Y-cable design, mainly due to the unavailability of matching back-shells for the three connectors involved which would result in a tacky looking item. I'm thinking of an assembly consisting of a DH-26 connector with metalized plastic back-shell that would attach to the card, a short cable (12-18") then a compact extruded aluminum enclosure with the DE-9 and DB-19 connectors on either side.

I figure from my price hunting that it should be entirely possible to make these for about $25 a piece, mostly for materials but also including a meager labor charge to cover the enclosure modifications (basically just milling the openings in the end covers for the connectors to fit, which I can do myself), assembly, and testing of each cable. Right now I just want to see if there is any interest from the rest of the community for these cables, I'll be making one for myself anyways but if I had total interest for about 10 pieces it would be cost-effective for me to offer them for the price mentioned above.

So, how about it, anybody out there interested in an aftermarket cable to use with your LC Apple II cards for $25 (plus shipping of course)?

 

[jrehmer]

I would definitely be interested. I have a few cards but have never stumbled upon the y-cable for a reasonable price (read: less than $50).

 

[Carrington]

I expect there would be a lot of interest on eBay. I see the IIe cards come up quite often, but usually sans the Y-cable. I was lucky to snag my card with a cable by buying a low-priced LC that happened to have the card installed; but I see auctions all the time with missing cables, so there must be a market for them.

 

[Unknown_K]

$25 plus shipping will be $30+. Not sure there are that many people who would be interested. The cables do come up on ebay once in a while for under that price.

 

[jrehmer]

$25 plus shipping will be $30+. Not sure there are that many people who would be interested. The cables do come up on ebay once in a while for under that price.

Not sure where you're finding these on eBay, but I haven't seen the cable alone go for less than $75 in several months.

 

[Unknown_K]

Well the cards with cable were not worth that much as of last year (last time I stumbled across one while looking for something else). I have the cable but not the card (no real interest in IIe emulation on an LC when I have a few IIgs).

Anyway hit up macmetex on ebay, he has sold a few of them in the past and probably has more (590-0703-A).

Too bad I am not into speculation, I could have cornered the market.

 

[Sterling]

I would be interested in making about 10 of those after market cable/box assembly units you are talking about.

Or better yet, let's get together and find a place that we can just send a cable to and have them copy it, maybe qnt 20-50?

 

[chalackd]

The interest in these cables had been weak enough when I was looking into this, so I never got around to tooling up to modify any enclosures as planned at the time, nor did I invest in purchasing the necessary cable & connectors that I didn't already have available...

I did wire up a test cable at the time though, and can verify that the available schematic out there is correct.

I'd question the feasibility of having cables commercially built, I get a feeling that while it should give a cleaner looking finished product it would also likely result in a higher price per cable than the already unpopular seeming $25 a piece + shipping which covered the price of the parts with under $5 left for machining, assembly and testing of each cable. The choice to modify the extruded aluminum enclosures was also done because it was cheaper than buying a pair of back shells, buying one thick cable instead of sourcing two smaller cables with similar jackets was easier and cheaper, and visually matching three different sized back shells was proving to be very difficult at the required sizes...


I could still be pursuaded to get at these, assuming that I would have any success at moving a few through eBay or something (probably at a slightly inflated price there) to make up the costs of buying all the parts and doing the work then potentially having to sit on the remainder until some interest sprouted up. Maybe I'll look into getting a few of the modified enclosures made in the next week or so and go from there...

 

[Sterling]

Well either way, I would be interested.

I'm still wondering if there is a company like Digikey or some other cable company that can make replicas of cables for cheap even on small runs?
Maybe not.

When I did some research, I found I could get the right end pieces with covers, but hadn't gotten farther than that to order and make up some.
I like your idea of a box at the end of a single cable, that would probably be easier. I wonder if it would be easy to find the connector will full pinout cable coming from it.
That would make it a lot easier to bring that cable into a box and solder onto the two separate Joystick and Disk D connectors... Ever seen anything like that available?