What's that cable?

I'm tidying up in the attic, mainly throwing away defunct computer hardware that I no longer need. I'm tossing most of it into a separate box, which I'll bring along to the next empeg gathering to see if anyone wants any of it, as has happened in the past.

I've come across a cable I can't identify.

It's got a DE-9 connector on one end, and a jack on the other end (but it's not stereo, because it's got 4 contacts, rather than the normal 3). It has no visible part numbers on it.

I think it came with my (long dead) Hauppage PVR350. Can anyone confirm/refute this? What's it for?

I had a nearly identical connector: DB9 plug at one end, 1/8" stereo plug at the other. I seem to recall that its purpose was to slave-control a high definition tuner module add-on to an old big-dish satellite receiver.

I could swear that I've seen similar ones that are designed to hook DVRs to other tuner systems such as cable boxes or satellite receivers.

I'm using 2 of those at the moment. Both to connect a tivo to a digital cable box directly, without having to use IR.

Jack implies female, which makes me wonder how you know it has four connectors. I'm guessing you mean a TRS plug. (Or a TRRS plug, in this case.) (Actually, Wikipedia says that UK folks call these jack plugs, which is an oxymoron here.)

As Tony says, it's almost certainly a proprietary RS232 serial cable for some device that has limited space for a connector. Older TiVos had that setup, though I remember them as being TRS plugs, not TRRS.

This page would seem to refute the notion that it's for your PVR350, as there are only two connectors that look like they could accept that plug, and they're "Line In" and "Infrared". It also only mentions two in-the-box cables, and they don't match your description.

I'm in the UK. We often use the term "jack" for both ends. It is, as you say, a TRRS plug.



Odd. I wonder what it's from, then?

Old PDA or calculator?

I don't know where yours comes from, but it sounds identical to the cable that interfaces some ham radios with PC's.

Got a Pronto remote control? The programming cable for that is like that.

Me too for the Tivo. It is sure nice having a cable box that works with it for once the IR blaster sucks.

Another one: SCART to DB9M. Any ideas? Looks fairly new.

I'll go for anything that can make an Aston Martin from a SCART cable...

Yeah, the TSU1000 had a cable like that.

I'll look at my Tivo cables later to see if that one had 3 or 4 contacts.

I had a cheap and nasty flash media video player that used a similar cable.