Crimp 4 Joy
 

No it's not the name of a gay street gang. Today I was in Compusa and bought an RJ11/RJ45 crimping tool. I have recently had a spate of phone and network plugs break off their hooks. After a few times losing my connection and having to slide the cable back in 1/10 inch to make the connection I had had enough. I wasn't going to buy another 10-12ft Cat 5e cable.

After reading the instructions, it took me at least 15 minutes to untangle the 8 f***ing wires (I believe that this is the technical term) into order and have them stay there long enough to slip into the connector.

During all of this I was flashing back to the sitting in my parent's condo in Atlantic City 24 years ago with a soldering iron custom making a serial cable to connect a Hayes 300 (or was is 1200) Smartmodem to an Atari 800.

These are the days of my geek life.

I'm sure your hair is just lovely now!

1) Important is also to get RJ45 connectors that are compatible with that kind of wire. Solid or stranded wire.

2) Each wire must be fully up to the front end of that connector. Generally that means a magnifying Loopy or strongest reading glasses from Wal-mart or the grocery store to actually see each wire is fully inserted. Each prong pushed down by the crimp tool has two vampire prongs. Both prongs must penetrate the wire to make a connection that is not intermittent.

3) At the rear of each RJ-45 is a strain relief. Ethernet wire cover must be inserted enough so that the strain relief grabs cable cover.

4) A reason for etherent (or telephone) connector damage is when a locking tab gets caught and broken off. This failure averted by a connector cover, installed on wire before the connector is attached, so that the locking tab is covered. Radio Shack is one of few retail sources for this RJ-xx connector tab protector.

5) After all that labor, hHow does those Chinese make money crimping these things?

If you practice diligently, you should be able to get that time down to 13 minutes.

I did it the other night, and the white halves of the pairs were not marked with stripes. All the whites were completely white and the only way you could tell which color they paired with was to trace them back to the twist. I had to do half the job in the garage. With a cheapie $19 tool, not the good one. Did I mention my tendonitis?

Worked right the first time. I recut the wires after getting them lined up into the correct order.

I definitely don't want to make a career out of this. I don't know how network techs do it.

UT, what brand of cable didn't bother to color code correctly?

Also, I bought the $30 tool ($10 with rebate). The crimper and cutter worked great.