Search around on Ebay and Google. 99% of the time you'll encounter straight-through wiring on Mac serial cables.
ive never had a problem of having a cable that didnt work
all of the mac cables that i own all function the same way
both the ones that were packaged with my midi interfaces when i bought them
and the ones i bought from an electronics surplus store in my area
function the same
i dont need to worry about the pinout configuration
i pick up the cable and plug it in on both ends and thats the end of it;)
if u want to call them crossover cables then i guess u can call them crossover cables
they are all normal mac serial cables for me and they all work..
like i said in my other post i think u were given a cable that is wired differently for some other implentation or use other then with geoport/serial?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoPortThe table below shows the name and purpose of the various pins in the GeoPort-enabled serial connector when used in GeoPort, RS-422 (LocalTalk) and RS-232 modes.
Pin # GeoPort RS-422 RS-232 Name
1 SCLK HSKo DTR Serial Clock (out), Handshake Out, Data Terminal Ready
2 SCLK HSKi DSR Serial Clock (in), Handshake In, Data Set Ready
3 TxD- TxD- TD Transmit data (-ve signal)
4 GND GND GND Cable ground
5 RxD- RxD- RD Receive data (-ve signal)
6 TxD+ TxD+ Transmit data (+ve signal)
7 TxHS GPi CD Wakeup/DMA Request, General Purpose input, Carrier Detect
8 RxD+ RxD+ (ground) Receive data (+ve signal)
9 +5 V Power, 350 mA maximum
notice this table is detailing the difference between RS-422 specification and the RS-232 specification
both of which use the same pin scheme
i think that this is the source of your issues with cables.. u have been given a rs-232 cable instead of a rs-422 cable
or vice versa - i think this is kind of confusing to really get to the bottom of because its antiquated and there was alot of different
serial configurations for specific purposes.. i think that most of the normal mac serial cables did indeed have this crossover
rx -> tx and tx-> rx configuration.. maybe the straight thru cables were inteded as "Extension" cables of some sort?
http://www.omega.com/techref/das/rs-232-422-485.htmlthis page is talking about some differences between the two specs
saying that 422 is builtin support for daisy chaining devices (referd to here as multi-drop?)
whereas 232 does not support this and also says that pcs dont come with rs-422 ports at all
with this info i think its safe to say that the mac port is rs-422
and thats the reason why the mtp's have this networking feature