[sdiy] Mini-Din cable woes

[Joel B]

Hi Nathan, 

good thoughts & suggestions. I have a factory original cable, so I know all instruments are working, wanted to make additional cables for others to use who have these and for self educational purposes. No way to test it without cables. 

I didn’t really want to disassemble the unit but your suggestion is a good idea, I can do that and put some pictures online to fill in the gaps in available info.

Joel

Sent from my iPhone 

> On Jan 4, 2019, at 7:17 PM, Nathan Trites <nathan at idmclassics.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi Joel,
> 
> On this page the Connector/Mixer layout makes it look like they're pretty straight forward... just triggers + ground, but doesn't offer any insight to how they're actually wired to thhttp://uzzfay.fortunecity.ws/pearlfm8/fm8.htmle DIN jacks.
> 
> http://uzzfay.fortunecity.ws/pearlfm8/fm8.html
> 
> If there's another PCB for the Mini DIN's it should be fairly straightforward to trace from the mixer PCB to those and see whats going on. Photos of any DIN jack PCB and wiring inside the unit would be helpful, as well as seeing how you've wired the TRS jacks. 
> 
> Is there any way to confirm the voices all work without the trigger cable? 
> 
> Nathan
> 
>> On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 1:36 AM Joel B <onephatcat at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> I have a couple of Pearl fightman analog drum modules (circa 1979/80) and one came with the complete drum kit and cables, the other without.
>> 
>>  I’ve been attempting to create a second set of cables, with only partial success. The cables are each a 5 pin mini-din (https://goo.gl/images/pDHvsP) that split to a fan of 4 and 5 RCA Male jacks - proprietary cables that nobody seems to make. (crash/ride/oh/ch)/(kick/snare/toms). First problem is how to solder tiny wires to tiny posts. Took a while to get that right, and I’m pretty sure there is a better way, like wires with some kind of clip already attached...
>> 
>> Second problem was that I think the outside ring on the mini-din is the ground (or at least the “common” wire) as far as I can tell from my amature multimetering. 
>> 
>> So I built a couple cables, and the second try sort of worked but a little intermittently. Thinking I understood how to do this now I built a third one that works even less and a fourth one that doesn’t work at all. I can’t find a short. The pins all have good connectivity. 
>> 
>> I was trying to adapt to 3.5mm jacks so I wired to 3.5mm female sockets instead of RCA male, to use with beatstep pro or other trigger (Original cables with an rca/3.5mm adapter do work with beatstep pro). I could only find TRS 3.5mm sockets online when I wanted TS but I’m pretty sure I soldered that part the same way on all my attempts... 
>> 
>> I’m wondering, are the pins on the newer mini-din male just maybe not long enough? What am I doing wrong? Certainly they seem not designed for the sleeve of the mini-din to be a soldier point but It seems to be so in the original cables, so I made that connection.
>> 
>> Joel
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