>
>For those that are in IT - we've probably all see comms cabinets from
>hell, and this is no exception (so before a sub-topic gets going here -
>I'm chiming in with my war story!)

Way back when, before twisted pair lans, we did our offices on two floors of a building.. We used serial muxes, any port can connect to any port.

So, I ran 25 pair wire (relatively cheap) to punchdown blocks in each office, and in the equipment room.  Everything then happened in cross-connect wire on the labeled blocks. You could connect printer A in office X to computer B in office Y without going through the mux, or just connect both to mux ports and go that way.

Mux ports were pricey though, so we didn't use too many of them.

We had our Onyx computer system in here, plus the muxes, and a Mitel SX-200 phone system, and some ancillary equipment.

Every cable was labeled, and we had an allocation standard for pairs that reserved the first five for phones, and gave a standard for serial wiring (gnd/tx/rx/cts/rts) on the rest.

The main room was done on two 4x8 sheets of plywood, and was pretty crowded.
I had a roll of cross connect wire, and punchdown tool chained to the board, and a binder with all the documentation. 


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