Cat 5 Cable Voltage

I have in front of me a fair length of Cat 5 cable (rj45 8 core)

Do you think it would be safe to use this with the 5v from the parallel port for a project I'm doing ?

Anyone with experience of this typr of thing a bonus !!!

absolutly Mark. people use this type of cable for telephones which have a 6V line voltage and 45V pulsating DC ringer voltage.

I dont' think you'll have a problem with the voltage, but I don't think you've enough cables in a Cat5 to wire up a parallel printer.

IIRC printer leads should be no more than 15m

Do you have a serial Port, because we use Cat5 cabling for serial for >80m

Steve

if you feel uncomfortable with this you could always double, triple or even put four on each side.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Tedob1
absolutly Mark. people use this type of cable for telephones which have a 6V line voltage and 45V pulsating DC ringer voltage.

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'Official' standard ratings are 30vac 42vdc

HTH

Thanks Guys.

What project are you working on? Share with us sometime if it's not propietary and you have the time.

Where I used to work our digital phones used cat5, and sent power to the phones, I think it was about 40vdc down cat5

Certainly it was possible to get a small shock off it when messing around in the back of the patch panel :)

well one other thing to think about is.. not the voltage rating but how much
current you'll be drawing thru it.. you didn't say what your "project" would
draw current wise.. now apart from what Ted said on doubling up your wires..
that's all well and good if you don't exceed the current your mobo 12v trace from pwr
supply to the port connector can handle. if you are just going to draw 300-500ma
then you might be ok,but don't expect to draw more than an amp.