Hi everyone, what a wonderful forum you guys have here and such smart people too. So… I have a CME UF80 and decided to (stupidly) relocate the keybed to under my desk and was hoping to have the main controller part on top of my desk (things I do when I get bored)… So i went ahead and mounted the keybed under my Desk and purchased some ribbon extension cables (130cm) from China. This is where it all went wrong. I did not realise that ribbon cables won’t work if they are longer than 45cm 
So now I don’t know what to do, Is it even possible to still use my keyboard this way? I haven’t been able to find any alternative wire that would work either. Is there a kit available on here that would do the trick?. Sorry for the long post, hope you guys can help me. I can upload pics if you need me too also… I’m sorry If I have posted this in the wrong area too…Thanks so much 
Hi and welcome to the forum!
Well, to be honest I can not believe, that a ribbon cable with this length stops working completely.
Are you sure that the ribbon cable has the correct orientation? I made this mistake often in the past. In general it’s a twisted cable (one connector looks up, one connector looks down, cable straight).
Pictures might help!
I had to use male to male connectors so I could join, cause you cant buy male to female
Welcome to the forums!
Two suggestions/remarks:
a) take photos of the end connectors of the original cable, there is a mark on every IDC connector, marking “pin 1”. It is usally an arrow. When building a clone cable, make sure you replicate it in a way, that the orientation of the new connectors is identical, with the connector “arrow” marks being on the identical wire strands.
b) unfortunately, cable length can be an issue. We ran into a cable length problem with an OLED recently, that was triggered by just adding 20cm of ribbon wire length. Yes, we would not have believed it earlier on :). So, if it still does not work after step a), try to reduce your cable length and see when it works.
Good luck,
Peter
Thanks and Hi Peter, yes I am aware of the arrow marking pin1 thanks. Maybe its not possible to join 2 females using a male to male? maybe I need to chop off the ends and solder. What are your thoughts please?
Not sure if these photos will help, 2nd photo is the original cables from the keybed
Oops, I think I finally see the problem, these cables cant be joined this way. Am I right? Up till now Iv’e been thinking as long as the red is on the same side it would work but no I see now that doing that puts pin1 on the bottom row instead of the top. Does this make sense at all? I think I should solder, what do you think guys?
Yes it makes sense, one side of your ribbon seems to be wrong (left connector on your picture)
4 hours ago, Gregmidi said:
Welcome here…
Best regards
Bruno
Thanks Bruno, I’ll let you guys know if it works tomorrow… going to bed now
Hi guys, about to do some soldering and just want to check the configuration on a 20 pin IDC. Is it correct that pin 2 is directly underneath pin 1? thanks
Yes! That’s correct!
Ah cool, thanks… will try it now
As you noticed, you can’t extend ribbon cables this way as you end up “mirroring” the connection. Better would be to use a male IDC such as this:
Also this from Reichelt:
Yes it seems I found out the hard way lol… thanks for the links also… but good news anyway guys its all working now that I have soldered it… seems ribbon can work over longer lengths after all Thanks for all your help guys, take care