DIYbanter - View Single Post - OT(ish) - delivery from eBay of small electronic components

Steve Walker[_5_]

On 26/01/2018 10:10, wrote:
On Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:20:00 UTC, Roger Hayter wrote:
Dave W wrote:
On 22/01/2018 10:23, dennis@home wrote:
On 22/01/2018 07:10, tabbypurr wrote:

I don't treat them as a source at all. Last time I went there they
were selling leads for north of Ł20 a piece. I can pay a tenth of
that elsewhere.

If they are HDMI then they are Ł1 in poundland.

Yes but the HDMI lead I bought from Poundland led to strange things
happening because the internal wires had no screening or twisting. I
eventually went crestfallen to pay Maplin's ransome. I minimised this by
being adamant with the salesman I didn't need gold plating.

Actually (decent) gold plating is quite a good idea for signal integrity
medium/long term. But *only* if the mating socket is gold plated.
Which most of them aren't.

it's entirely useless unless you're using the lead in a damp location

No, gold connectors avoid tarnishing where others would, even in quite
benign conditions and that is useful with low level signals. Much of
industry only purchases industrial relays with gold contacts for control
systems (even inside indoor control panels) - silver are fine for higher
voltages and currents.

SteveW