I broke an RJ45 connector today, those little things on the ends of Cat 5 cable. It's not critical, so it can wait a few days. But, I did some Googling around, and educated myself on replacing them. Seems rather straight-forward.
So, I went to Amazon, ordered the crimping tool and some pass-thru connectors. They came as a kit, and this seems to be a skill that should be in my tool kit. There seems to be two main protocols for the color scheme in wiring these connectors. I'll have to pay attention to that. It seems that scheme B is the most common, but I'll look at the broken connector to see which protocol the last guy used.
These cables rum my range, connecting timers, lights and displays. I probably have a couple of thousand feet of Cat5 in the shop.
4 comments:
Nothing to it as long as you pay attention and go only as quickly as your dexterity allows. DOUBLE CHECK the alignment (sequence and evenness of the ends) before you crimp! Otherwise it can turn into a maddening experience. I'd predict that anyone with the kit and the ability to reload ammo can do it. But if you screw it up, and probably will at least once, just grab the scissors and do it again, more carefully.
Crimping has its place, but I avoid it as much as possible. Eight points of failure in that little piece of plastic. I always run bulk cable into a modular keystone jack (female). Then use premade cables to connect to the appliance (PC, Printer, whatever). The punch downs in the keystones are far more reliable and easier to validate than the crimp. However, that won't always work for every application. Make sure you crimp correctly, including the insulation, rookie mistake is to cut the insulation back to far on the sleeve of the cable. Never encountered 568A in my 20 years of experience always used 568B but you're right it does exist. I think 568A was used in a lot of telephone applications, so retrofitting an old building was the most likely scenario. A good crimp tool, punch tool and tester will save you some serious headaches, worth the investment if you have that much cabling in your location. Best of luck!
get a low cost cable tester also. you can grab one at home depot.
Yep, 568A was phones back in the day. Agree with both of the above. And yes, it WILL drive you nuts if you get one that doesn't work. Cut BOTH ends off and start over.
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