Nokia CA-42 Connectivity Adapter Cable for Nokia Phones

I bought this cable for fixing my Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives, not for data transfer. I received it in a box which said "Connectivity Adapter Cable CA-42 - Support high speed data transfer". When I open the box I saw a USB in one end of the cable (and another end has about 6 pins ? maybe for plugging into the Nokia cell phone). The cable is sticked with a label "For NOK CA-42 - Made In China" (that why its cost only $7.69 + Shipping & Handling 5.03) and it came with a small CD labeled as "USB Data cable".I had experienced with 2 inconvenience of this Prolific NOK CA-42 (for Nokia CA-42)1. I noted that the cable drivers in the CD does not work for Win Vista or 7 and it was not easy to find the right usb cable driver that work in Win Vista or Win 7 - I was spending almost 2 days and finally I googled and found one man gave a link to: vista-prolific-chip-driver-for-serial-adapters.zip and this one worked for me on my Win Vista only.2. When I cut off one end of the usb CA-42 cable I saw there was only 3 wires: Blue, Green and White which are for Ground, RX and TX. After I connected the Blue wire to GND, Green to TX and White to RX of my hard drive I ran the hyperterminal to test but it still didn't work.. I opened the USB cover and saw that there was a red wire in the usb board being welded (solder connection) to the GND and RX root wires together. After I took off the red wire then tried again and it worked fine and I had fixed my Seagate 7200.11 harddrive's BSY problem.Also I could see that the quality inside the Prolific NOR CA-42 was not too good. And after I ordered I got it 6 days later (I ordered on Sat. evening and received it on Frid. evening) - not 3 to 5 days as Amazon said in the saling webpage. I give 3 stars for this Prolific NOK CA-42 cable because I have tried hard to make it works and the quality inside of the cable like the wires was too thin.

I know a lot of people buy this cable to fix problems with Seagate 7200.11 hard drives. If you are, be careful.First it is an authentic 5 wire cable, instead of the knock-off that uses 3 wires which is shown in most of the demonstrations on how to wire it for serial comms to the hard drive..This means you will have to spend time figuring out what wire does what.Also, because it is the authentic cable, both ends are just about impossible to peel back w/o destroying the thing. I made the mistake of cutting the phone end off prior to plugging it into the computer. When I plugged in the USB connection wasn't even recognized by the computer (no sound effect or notification that a USB device was plugged-in thus it was $20 down the drain. Since, I'd already chopped it, it couldn't be sent back. So, moral of the story - check the cable before you cut it, and be careful once you do.

I bought this cable for one reason only, to fix my bricked E2000 Linksys router. When I first received it, I cut the end of and tried the cable out. It wasnt communicating correctly so I took apart the USB plastic housing to inspect what wires were what. I noticed the Tx solder connection had broken off, nothing serious and I soldered it back on. After that it worked great! I had mentioned this in a review I had send the supplier but expected nothing back. To my surprise they offered a $3 refund even though I had easily fixed the cable. They have great customer service! And if your cable isnt working properly, just check the solder connections, its an easy fix and would save both you and the supplier any hassle.I highly recommend this to anyone who wants a compact TTL cable.

I used the cable to fix a bricked seagate drive of mine. This is a cheap way to get a serial to ata adapter. I would have rated the cable as 5 star but the USB end is covered in a tough to remove rubbery plastic. This is not like some that simply snap open. You only need to do this to find the TX and RX wires for making the adapter. I never used it as intended so I don't know if it would have worked well with a nokia phone. I also did not use the drivers that came with the device but went and got them online. The cable did what I needed it to do.

I needed a TTL USB cable for connecting to my Wifi access point over serial.Connectors are solid rubber - be careful if you need to remove it to get to the pins on the Nokia connector (luckily I didn't).Wiring is: blue GND, green RX, white TXDriver installation is a bit finicky but works great once you get it working.Can't speak for how well it works with a Nokia phone, but it definitely works for getting a serial console on your Wifi AP.

My wife's Nokia phone, for whatever reason could not be set up to transfer photo's to our PC.We ordered the cable in hopes that would allow us to retrieve the photo'ds- but no such luck.We have returned the cable to the vendor, and have been issued a credit. We REALLY would wantyed the pictures-

...there has to be a better way of communicating with one's Nokia cell phone than this! I believe a Blue Tooth USB device for the computer would be a much better option, although I cannot vouch for the reliability of Blue Tooth vs the USB/Serial cable.A great product, but in my opinion quite over-priced.

CA-42 is used for the same cell phones that use DKU-5. CA-42 is clearly a better choice. It's easier to insert as it has less pins. The phone recognizes the cable and gives feedback, so one can be sure that the connection is working. I read that DKU-5 is not supported by the latest Nokia programs on Windows, so CA-42 is the only choice. As for Linux, CA-42 is recognized as a USB modem, as opposed to DKU-5, which is recognized as a USB serial port. I was able to use both gnokii (connection = dku5) and gammu (connection = fbus) with the cable.