[Elecraft] Detaching the K2 Faceplate

[Andrew Moore]

> I was wondering if anyone has ever detached the faceplate of a K2? 
I've been wanting to try this, and I think a 40 conductor IDE disk drive cable would be a good starting point -- they should be readily available, and connectors at each end that should be compatible with the "face" and "chassis" sides of the K2 with only slight modification.  You'd need a male-male header at one end since the cables have two female ends.  Since the K2 uses only 20 pins between the chassis and face, you could use every other conductor on the cable as a ground for shielding.  The IDE cable has two rows of 20 pins -- one row would connect to the existing K2 signals between face/chassis, while the other row of 20 could be connected to ground, and if I remember the cable layout correctly, one of these would conveniently fall adjacent to each signal pin on the cable.  Might be best to get a good length of cable (rather than 1-2 feet from a standard IDE cable) and the correct gender headers from digikey/etc. after experimenting with a standard IDE cable.
--Andrew, NV1B