Is my 468 Cable tester dead ?

Question

Hi folksI bought a bunch of used tools for my home wiring project and most ofthem are in working condition. This 468 tester (Progressiveelectronics) I'm not too sure about. I changed the 9V battery,connected a CAT5 patch cable between the transmitter and reciever andswitched the tx'er on. Nothing happened. No lights. nothing. I triedall the ports : 568A/568B/USOC.I am planning to install a gigabit Cat5e network in my house. Igathered some kind of test equipment would be nice to verifyinstallation. Of course I can plug 2 computers into the network toverify the network too. The cable is already in and waiting to bejack'ed. It will be leviton jacks (from home depot) installed with aHarris D814. Patch cables will be off-the-shelf. This is first timeI'm doing this but I gathered the right tools should ensure success.I did get a Progressive Electronics tone generator and inductiveamplifier too. Will these help ensure the wiring is good for gigabitLAN ?Thanks for your time..RegardsGreg

Watson A.Name "Watt Sun - the · Accepted Answer

Sounds to me like this is a pretty simple, dumb tester, so don't expect it to do much for you even if it's working.No, not really.  They're for tracing down wiring.

Carl Navarro · Answer

Yep. The first time mine diied whas when I plugged it into a live Merlin 820 jack. The second one only blew out one of the lights, but it was pretty much worthless.

Tempo now makes them in blue/gray. I don't know if they work any better.

Which Leviton jack are you buying rated for Gigabit at Home Dumpo? I'm not even sure the the Cat-6 are rated that fast and I missed that display.

The 5G108 are probably only rated to 350 Mhz where I guess the cable you installed is also rated. Just a thought.

No.

Carl Navarro

TransFigure II · Answer

Thanks for your responses. My first line is installed and works fine (till now). Terminating the jacks on the cable was pretty easy with the D814. Right tools make the job easy. I can imagine what problems I might still be debugging if I had used the puny pushdown tool which came with the Leviton Jacks.

These are cat5e jacks. I'm not sure how it's going to be at gigabit. If I find a problem I will probably change the jacks on the critical paths (fileserver to HTPC). THe cable is a belden cat5e plenum. I gather this should be fine for gigabit.

Justin Time · Answer

The cable is fine, and upgrading the jacks to Cat 6 won't buy you anything. A cable run is only as good as its lowest rated component, so Cat 6 jacks on a Cat 5(e) cable just gives you an expensive Cat

5(e) run.

Justin

Justin T. Clausen · Answer

Also, 5e is rated for gig anyway.  If you installed it right, you should be fine.

Is my 468 Cable tester dead ?

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