Subj : Making a Parallel Port Laplink cable
To   : All
From : kirkspragg
Date : Sat Aug 09 2025 18:36:32

Hey there, hope the weekend is being good to you all.

I have recently moved house & am in the process of setting up my home lab/office. In the previous house, I had a pretty sweet setup to transfer stuff from my main PC to my retro PC sitting on another desk using a parallel port laplink cable.

TLDR; new office space means the desk is now further away and my laplink cable is too short. I need one thats >= 4 meters long, and rather then buy one (even if I can find one of the correct length for sale somewhere) I'd rather make one.

Got what seem to be reasonable pin-outs for the cable from 
masterberg.se/hberg/CablePinouts. Problem is I need 18 core shielded cabling..... where would I find such cabling for sale? I'd settle for fewer cores and use multiple runs of cable between the plugs if need be.... within reason.

Looking at the usual electronics stores available locally (Christchurch NZ) & I'm not coming up with anything great, most of the multicore cable I can find at jaycar (NZs equivalent of RadioShack) is unshielded or only has 4 or fewer cores....

I guess I need to look elsewhere, but where?
Anyone else made their own parallel port laplink cable? If so what did you use?

I'll probably put together a long null modem serial cable to use for now, the transfer speed will be considerably less but it would do for a bit.

.... Do it today. Tomorrow it will be illegal.

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