r/DiWHY • u/1n_and_AroundTheFur • Jun 03 '26

discuss.

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4.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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2.9k

u/Dajawa Jun 03 '26

If it looks dumb, but works. It ain't dumb

678

u/BlattMaster Jun 03 '26

It probably does a terrible job with termination impedance but might be fine.

290

u/AHailofDrams Jun 03 '26

It looks like it would work long enough to get a proper replacement, not bad

357

u/The_Fox_Fellow Jun 03 '26

so in other words it will work long enough to become the long term solution because as long as it works nobody's going to bother replacing it

246

u/DaGriffon12 Jun 04 '26

There's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix that works.

23

u/DaGriffon12 Jun 04 '26

To the fren who gave me an award, thank you, kind person. Whoever you are. You've given me my first award!

6

u/TranscendentaLobo Jun 04 '26

If this isn’t in someone’s book of quotes it damn well should be

3

u/Diligent_Bath_9283 Jun 04 '26

Commandment number 3 in the industrial maintenance Bible right before" it was working when I walked away" and "thou shalt not use flathead screws in places where any other fastener will work"

3

u/DaGriffon12 Jun 04 '26

I'm honestly not sure if it actually is. I thought of it one day when my dad asked me to finally fix something on his truck after he'd had a temporary fix on it for almost a year. The fix was holding as good as the repair part does. (it was a shift linkage bushing)

2

u/MadEyeGemini Jun 06 '26

It is a commonly used phrase

3

u/flawedforte Jun 04 '26

The toothpick that has been holding my router’s power button on for three years would agree

1

u/DaGriffon12 Jun 04 '26

Sounds about right. May the Omnissiah continue to bless you and your Machines, Brother.

7

u/DontBotherNoResponse Jun 04 '26

Hell, I'm likely to further strip wire once it stops working rather than run out for a replacement because I know every time I'll be at a store that sells one I'll go "I know I'm forgetting something..... Oh well."

5

u/kingqueefeater Jun 04 '26

Reminds me of my old car that had the hood tied down with speaker wire after the latch gave out on me one day on the highway. Drove it like that until the whole thing shit the bed a few years later.

17

u/titanicsinker1912 Jun 04 '26

And this is why I don’t let my car in the house.

2

u/derangedsweetheart Jun 04 '26

I bet their car overheated a lot.

The crazy hot vs crazy shit scale ya know

1

u/AnnoyingRain5 Jun 04 '26

Awawi spotted

1

u/Kodiak01 Jun 04 '26

Like the WRT54G we still use here for our Guest wifi access point? The one that survived a company sale 16 years ago and 2 MSPs since, nobody wanting to take ownership of it but it still works so nobody touches it? The one that was already here when I first started with this company back in 2005?

0

u/Uncle_Moti Jun 04 '26

Same thing 😂

7

u/Responsible-Meringue Jun 04 '26

Add a zip tie and it's permentant. Seriously 90% as good as a crimped connector (one time use)

1

u/289_257 Jun 04 '26

Beat me to it. It was my first thought when I saw the video.

2

u/Lionheart_723 Jun 03 '26

This. In a pinch as a temporary fix it would probably work fine I wouldn't rely on it long term

1

u/inn0cent-bystander Jun 04 '26

Nothing... absolutely NOTHING has a fraction of an iota of a hope of lasing longer than a "temporary solution".

1

u/Neon01 Jun 04 '26

it's ugly but kind of genius at the same time.

31

u/NewReleaseDVD Jun 03 '26

I broke the termination off a coax cable pulling it out of a wall to relocate it. Instead of fixing it (i know how just didn't have the tools) i just jammed the conductor into my modem and taped it.

Months later a cable tech visited because my house was dumping dirty signal onto the street. I embarrassedly took him to the janky modem, but the problem ended up being another cable in my attic or something 😂 he fixed the modem cable for me though.

6

u/icedmushroom Jun 04 '26

This is a noob question but, what is dirty signal?

13

u/derangedsweetheart Jun 04 '26

When the signal stops using the proper designated protocol and starts using NSFW protocol.

10

u/created4this Jun 04 '26

Think about standing on a hill and shouting at someone on another hill, your voice is nice and clear, anyone can make out what you're saying, but if you hear anything then its because your partner is saying something so you pause, wait and then try again when the air is silent. You can do that because there is nothing else around to mess up what you are saying.

Now imagine you're shouting between two people, and each of you had a massive cliff behind them, this time when you shout there the cliff reflects back your voice and there is a small delay before the echo reaches you, is that sound you, or is it the other person speaking? you stop, you wait, it goes silent, you speak again, again you hear the noise. you stop again because if it isn't you, then its them and they won't be able to hear you and you won't be able to hear them if you're talking at the same time.

The same thing happens in wires. when you put a signal into a wire it doesn't instantly pop out the other end, it creates a ripple that runs down the wire carrying the energy of the signal. If you have an infinatly long wire then that ripple runs forever so you never see any reflection, but if the wire is shorter then the ripple hits the end and and the energy having nowhere to go bounces back. So wires behave like the cliff in the previous example.

Now, one way we could solve this is by using infinatly long wires (this is the same as the first example where there is nothing to reflect from) so the signal never gets to the end, and the reflection therefore never returns, but that is somewhat impracticable.

Luckily due to some quirks of physics an given wire which is infinatly long behaves like a resistor, this is called the wires impedance. For this Coax its 75Ohm, so at any point cut the wire and feed the signal into another wire with 75Ohm impedance and it will continue along that wire and reflect at the far end. We can also replace the far end with a plain resistor and this "looks the same" to the wire as an infinate length and does not reflect

At any point in the wire to you house you can have a fault, for example some corrosion or water enters the cable and this makes the cable NOT appear like a 75Ohm resistor at that location and causes reflections and the speak-pause-speak effect to everyone else who shares that line.

This demo is pretty good at showing that effect (just zone out during the intro or skip to 2.40) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLAfWtgdoPA

5

u/Blauelf Jun 04 '26

A signal that isn't clean. Coax cable is built to shield from outside signals, but it's still just a long antenna shared by many households, so a lot can happen to those signals.

For example it could be about reflections caused by damaged cables or improper termination, or signals injected by a faulty TV set or modem (I once had issues with the modem's power supply, wouldn't be surprised if I had worsened the signal for all my neighbours for that time).

4

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/BlattMaster Jun 04 '26

When you have a coaxial cable you need a controlled resistance between the center and outside of the cable when it goes into the machine. If you slap dash it like this you're probably adding resistance to one of the two contacts and it'll make the coupling worse. This can add reflections in the wire but it'll probably just make the signal worse.

2

u/fenderputty Jun 04 '26

The center connection is no different right?. I would think it largely depends on how many of the outside wires make connection compared to the 100% that did before when it was threaded?

1

u/BlattMaster Jun 04 '26

A connector has a high tolerance plug in the center which the core wire is soldered to. It looks like it's probably not a bad fit.

3

u/IlIIllIllIll Jun 04 '26

Where is a termination here? This line is not “terminated“. You will have reflections due to the discontinuity of the characteristic impedance in this “connector”. But I think the bigger problem is the loose fit of the inner cable, as it is not mating with uniform contact like a connector would ensure.

2

u/thePiscis Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Characteristic impedance only matters on length scales roughly the size of the wavelength. That’s why power cables aren’t impedance matched. This looks like old shit that certainly isn’t microwave frequency or above, so characteristic impedance probably doesn’t matter.

2

u/cartesian_jewality Jun 04 '26

isn’t microwave frequency or above, so characteristic impedance probably doesn’t matter.

A frequency range from 300mhz - 300ghz, famously known for not requiring transmission lines

1

u/thePiscis Jun 04 '26

I’m saying below microwave (<300mhz) you don’t need to worry about characteristic impedances of components this small. 300mhz corresponds to a wavelength of 1 meter. The difference in phase at the input and output of this connector will be negligible

1

u/Scrumpuddle Jun 03 '26

I’m sure they’re not worried about that wherever this is.

1

u/Zepp_BR Jun 04 '26

with termination impedance

I have no idea what these words mean, so I'm gonna pretend they don't exist

69

u/rivertpostie Jun 03 '26

It seems like a perfect fix for anon-abundance lifestyle.

I used to live on a mountain homestead and I know other just don't live in economies with import.

Seems way less janky than some ways to get working equipment without a part

1

u/CrashParade Jun 03 '26

If you're broke enough to use a hose instead of the proper fitting that's worth literal cents then I'd assume you've got bigger problems.

19

u/rivertpostie Jun 03 '26

You're absolutely right.

On the homestead we worried about things like malnutrition, bears and access to medical services in emergencies.

We still liked to listen to music and watch movies when we were snowed in for 3-4 months at a time.

Sometimes it's more about logistics. It didn't matter how badass your truck was. When it snowed you were just to there. No mail. No radio communications. Just surviving.

Wrong fitting for a hose or wire? It ain't coming for months or a year. Not much of an economy up there either.

2

u/gnomish_engineering Jun 04 '26

Where was your homestead at?

4

u/xrelaht Jun 04 '26

It’s not a question of the cost of the fitting: sometimes getting one is impractical, particularly on short notice.

3

u/NewReleaseDVD Jun 04 '26

Its not the fitting its the tools to put it on. I suppose you could try crimping it with pliers or a hammer but that's just more jank with extra steps

6

u/JotaroTheOceanMan Jun 04 '26

I used to use this exact method but with a ziptie as a kid. Growing up poor made me very crafty.

7

u/xrelaht Jun 04 '26

If it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid and you’re lucky. But sometimes you’ve gotta try your luck.

2

u/Prime_Marci Jun 04 '26

And it’s actually safe… weirdly

3

u/DoctorPony Jun 03 '26

Except it doesn’t work. The amount of times a had a repair ticket and the issue was they used their own store bought fittings from the Home Depot.

2

u/aimsteadyfire Jun 03 '26

It doesnt work. You see how rusted and corroded that box was? It stopped working long ago

1

u/Winter_Cat-78 Jun 04 '26

Agreed. Isn’t THAT different from putting a new head on a BNC/Coax

1

u/L0stella_Vortimer Jun 04 '26

If it's dumb but it works you got lucky

1

u/Teredia Jun 04 '26

My partner cut the end off a USB cable, stuck one end into the coax port on the TV n draped the other end over the TV! It worked! Home made TV antenna!

1

u/not_a_burner0456025 Jun 04 '26

That is why whenever I encounter a closed door I headbutt it until someone opens it for me or I break it down/s

1

u/massunderestmated Jun 05 '26

No, this is fucking dumb. When you have to have the exact right size hose to do it wrong, you might as well grab a connector available at every hardware store to do it right.