This thread is for anyone googling the same things I have been for the past few years. I had a heck of a time finding interface cables for the old school Allen Bradley Ultra100 drives in my mill. The previous owner rolled his own interface cables out of solder-cup connectors and I don't like them. They're haphazardly terminated and only the signals that he was interested in are connected. Every time I open the enclosure and see them, I go back to looking for a solution. Googling the P/N (AMP 2-178238-7) listed in the Ultra100 manual returned hardly anything. It's obsolete and it's the board-side (not the cable-end) connector, and none of the datasheets I was able find listed any mating connectors. I probably spent a cumulative couple of full work weeks over the past 4 years looking for pigtail cables to use with them. All I managed to find were more of the solder cup connectors and ridiculously priced used Allen Bradley double-end cables and breakout boards on eBay. I didn't want to solder those tiny pins and I didn't want to fill up my enclosure with clunky breakout boards, or pay for them; I just wanted pigtail cables, or some kind cable with that 50-pin end that I could cut and make into a pigtail. I never was able to find out what other purposes that connector serves, and what might be a good thing to google to find the perfect cable. 2 weeks ago I broke down and bought the ridiculously priced 50-pin cables and breakout boards off eBay. Then in the past 24hrs the stars aligned and I made a series of tragically time-late coincidental discoveries.

Before I go further, I can say with 100% certainty (because I ordered them and they didn't work) that the J1 connector on an Allen Bradley Ultra100 servo drive is not any of the following:
SCSI 1 / Telco 50 pin connector
SCSI 2 / Mini 50 / Micro DB50
RJ21 / RJ21X connector
50 Pin Centronics / IDC /CN50 connector
50 Pin "Champ"/Amphenol connector
(Although those all look the same in online storefront thumbnails, they're not, and the J1 connector is different still)

Discoveries, in the order I made them:

1. Last night reading through the manual for the Delta ASDA-A2, I found what appears to be the exact same connector on CN1 of that drive:

"hmm" I thought, "probably not the same, just the cosmos screwing with me, trying to get me to rip off a scab."

2. While compiling a parts list for PLC project for work ...This connector on the AutomationDirect homepage sure looks familiar... nah, I'm just seeing this stupid connector everywhere I look now. I must be traumatized.


3. I couldn't not scratch that itch, so I looked up what that AutomationDirect cable is for (SureServo drive) and compared it to the Delta AS2 manual. They're the same dang plug. The P/N's are off by one letter, but I'm 99% certain that the P/N in the SureServo manual is obsolete and the P/N in the Delta manual is the current equivalent; they are the same.



4. The part numbers for the mating connectors ARE in the Ultra100 manual. I must be the most oblivious person I know, because I've searched that stupid manual dozens of times, and only just now found found it, and only by searching for the P/N found in the AD and delta manuals:


5. Now that I have the list off all 3 mating connectors, I began to wonder if the other connectors are the same (I only ever cared about J1, but for the sake of curiosity): They are. I cannot find the CN2 connector P/N the Delta manual, but this is way more than coincidence at this point, all 3 of them use a 20pin HDR connector for CN2/J2 with the same layout as the CN1/J1 connector. They have to be the same. I'm not saying the connector pinouts are anything remotely close between the three, but the connectors are, and they can use the same cables


And you can get (most of) the cables "cheap" from AutomationDirect. Here's the full cross-reference table:

AB Ultra 100 AD SureServo Delta A2 Connector P/N Automation Direct Cable P/N notes
I/O J1 CN1 CN1 10150-3000PE
(50 pin MDR)		 ZL-SVC-CBL50-X or Link
Encoder input J2 CN2 CN2 10120-3000PE
(20 pin MDR)		 SVC-EFL-XXX or SVC-EHH-XXX XXX = length Link
Other J3 (Encoder Output) CN1
(on A2-E & A3-F, ethercat models)		 10126-3000PE
(26 pin MDR)		 No 26 pin MDR cable on AD drives or website Link
(Mouser)
Serial Comms RS232/485 CN3 CN3 IEEE1394 SVC-PCCFG-CBL or SVC-485CFG-CBL-2 Link


I hope this helps someone searching for cables for Ultra100 or Delta A2/A3 drives.

Now commence the "uh, yeah everyone but you knew all this stuff already" comments.

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