Cables

A device for conducting data or power, in the context of computer systems, between devices or peripherals.

Some of the range we have catalogued includes:

Networking cables, are either copper- or fibre-based and further sub-divided as follows:

– UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) and later, STP (Shielded Twisted Pair). Shielded ethernet cables are a variant of twisted pair, used over short distances – Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 6a, Cat 7 etc..  Coaxial (or “coax”) and Patch.

– Fiber (/fiber) Optic Cable or just “fibre” may be either multi-mode fibre for shorter range applications or single-mode fibre for long range.

VGA (Video Graphics Array), DVI (Digital Visual Interface) and HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), used for external video connection.

PS/2 is strictly a connector/port standard rather than a cable (introduced by IBM for it’s Personal System/2 series). Now it is most commonly encountered in legacy mice, keyboards and KVMs.

Firewire / IEEE 1394, an ultrafast (at the time) standard for data transfer, which has been largely superseded now by:

USB (Universal Serial Bus) – USB 1.0, USB 1.1, USB 2.0, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1, USB 3.2, USB4

Drive connection cbls – PATA (/ATA, IDE), SAS/SATA, SCSI, for use between a drive and controller/system board and in the case of the latter, for chaining devices together.

Ribbon cbls for connection of LCD panels, keyboards, touchpads and other laptop components and a host of other applications. Older devices such as optical drives and floppy drives (FDDs) also use ribbon cables.

A myriad of other bespoke cables that are device-specific.

Please note we have included power cables/cords (which connect directly into the mains supply) in the Power category because they frequently are packaged with the device they support.