Cable Assemblies

Cable assemblies are collections of wires or cables banded into a single unit with connectors on at least one end.  Technologies available for cable assemblies include Fibre Channel, IEEE 1394, GPIB, LAN/Ethernet, parallel, patch, serial, and USB.  Fibre Channel is a scalable, high-speed, serial data transfer interface standard (ANSI X3TII).  The GPIB standard was designed to connect several instruments to computers for data acquisition and control.  LAN or Ethernet is a network standard first developed by Xerox, refined by DEC and Intel, and codified as the IEEE 802.3 standard.  Parallel cables work by transmitting a number of bits of data simultaneously over separate lines (for example, eight bits over eight lines) usually unidirectional.  A patch cable is a flexible cable terminated at both ends with a plug.  Used for interconnecting circuits on a patch panel. SCSI (pronounced "scuzzy") is an intelligent bus for transmitting data and commands between a variety of devices.  Serial cables work by transmitting data one bit at a time.  Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial 4-wire bus architecture for peripheral I/O developed by Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft.