Cabling the House - BEst source for wire/tools???

[bhorne at banet.net (Bill Horne)]

Neil,

For some things, Ebay is very good:  I bought an 8-port 
10BaseT/10Base2 hub there for $20, and it works fine, although 
prices climb dramatically as you get into the "current" stuff 
like 100BaseT.  3c509-Combo cards can be had for ~$10 in 
quantities of 2+, but prices also climb on NICs when you go up 
to 100 Mbps.  If you're just doing print sharing and occasional 
surfing, 10 Mbps will work fine, and most of the "Home LAN" kits 
you'll see in Staples/OfficeMax are just bundles of 10BaseT 
stuff that manufacturers are retiring from their commercial 
product lines.

If you're looking for Cat 5 wire, Greybar up in Somerville is 
good:  ask for Debra Kizis and tell her I sent you.  For some 
situations, premade Cat 5 is cheaper and easier than doing it 
yourself:  it depends on your situation and whether you can 
snake cable that already has connectors on it.  Either way, 
Debra will be able to get everything you need.  Of course, the 
biggest cost is the time you'll take to install the wire, so Cat 
5 is almost essential.

I stay away from Black Box - they're expensive and tend to cut 
corners on quality IMHO.  Given the "one time" nature of these 
expenses, it pays to get equipment from Cisco/IBM/3Com, etc.

YMMV.

Bill Horne



-----Original Message-----
From:	Henry Smith [SMTP:hjpsmith at earthlink.net]
Sent:	Monday, January 24, 2000 2:01 PM
To:	Niall Kavanagh; discuss at Blu.Org
Subject:	RE: Cabling the House - BEst source for wire/tools???

At 12:27 PM 1/24/00 -0500, Niall Kavanagh wrote:
>If you're looking for a "local" rather than a web shop, try 
"You do it"
>electronics.
>
>40 Franklin Street, Needham, MA 02494
>(781) 449-1005
>
>Lotsa cool stuff. Prices aren't the cheapest, but there's no 
shipping so
>that's okay. ;)
>
OK It's only a few miles from me so I will drop bye and see what 
they have.

I was trying to find what I want on the 'Net (tried BlackBox and 
looked
through CNET) but actually had a hard time finding stuff, too 
little detail
to say "Yeah, that's what I want!" Does anyone have any 
suggestions as to a
good Web supplier?

Thanks again,

Henry
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