Mike's Basic Guide to Cabling Computers and Telephone in Homes and Apartments [Spiral-bound]

Mike Gorman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0966063813 | ISBN-13: 978-0966063813 | Publication Date: October 1998

This book is a manual and guide for anyone interested on voice and data cabling for homes and apartments. It provides general information, handy tips, and step-by-step procedures for phone and computers in the home.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The drawings in this book are great. It was easy to follow and explained everything in regular terms. Its a definite "must have" book for the homeowner. -- Steve Meyer, Home owner

This book was so easy to read, and very helpful with illustrations, I was able to cable the entire apartment easily!

Thanks, Mike, without this useful book I would have been at a total loss! -- Len Bankes, Apartment renter

About the Author

Mike Gorman has been the President of CCPI, Inc. (ccpiinc.com) since 1982. He has worked in the computer and cabling fields since 1986. Mike was born and raised in New Jersey. He eventually settled down with his wife and daughter in Denver, Colorado. Mike began CCPI when major changes began occuring in the computer and telecommunications industry. The industry has undergone many changes, but Mike believes if you follow these basic guidlines, you will always come out on top. These include: knowledge of your field, quality in your work, and commitment to customer service.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 70 pages
• Publisher: Prairie Wind Communications Inc (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966063813
• ISBN-13: 978-0966063813
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,655,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST HAVE book for any home owner or apartment renter!, April 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mike's Basic Guide to Cabling Computers and Telephone in Homes and Apartments (Spiral-bound)

This is the long awaited sequel to Mike Gorman's other book, Mike's Basic Guide to Cabling Computers and Telephones. Although a great companion edition to the author's other book, this book stands on its own.

Broken down into seven chapters that are logical, easy to read, and instructive, this book will teach you how to cable your home or apartment. It starts off with planning and site inspection for cabling your home or apartment. Every home or apartment is different, so you will need to know the basics and some interesting features on the place you will cable.

The book moves on to the tools you will need, including detailed illustrations to show you what it is even if you never heard about it before. Next are the details on how to connect the wires to punchdown blocks and patch panels. After that is instructions on how to connect the wires to connectors for cable TV, telephone, and network.

Now if you have any problems with your installation, or want to troubleshoot your current wiring, the books explains in detail some great techniques to shoot troubles.

Finally the book discusses some difficult installation problems that you may encounter and how to overcome them. Specifically, what if your house is all brick? How about sheetrock walls and ceilings? Or are you lucky enough to have a raised ceiling with ceiling tiles? No matter your situation, you will come out ahead with this book.

If you are a homeowner, apartment renter or landlord, a homebuilder or construction foreman, or even just a real estate agent, this is THE BOOK for you. Last Sunday I wired a duplex home for a 100 Mbit network. It included 5 rooms over 2 floors and it took only 4 hours! Without the techniques used from this book it would have taken three times as long.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding book for the do-it-yourself wire installer, April 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Mike's Basic Guide to Cabling Computers and Telephone in Homes and Apartments (Spiral-bound)

The book is very concise and clean. I am moderately familiar with installing phone and computer network cable so it only took me 45 minutes to read the whole book. Don't let the small size confuse you though... It's easy enough for a novice to read, but a veteran who looked at your cable installation would be impressed by your work.

It has a lot of very good illustrations that take you through the most popular types of networking equipment and tools. The knowledge could easily be applied to wiring your own home, apartment or small office. It also mentions some of the techniques used for very large phone systems supporting hundreds of stations, but the most applicable writing to me is about how to take care of wire in homes, apartments and smaller to mid-sized offices. Someone who wires large companies is probably being trained through a different set of reading material... It is VERY obvious that the writter is speaking from years of cable installation experience.

It would be difficult for me to believe that anyone running cable, even a single phone line to a handful of stations in a home, wouldn't find at LEAST the cost worth of value in the book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very clear, some editorial work needed, June 25, 2001

By 

Donald Matteson (Kenmore, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mike's Basic Guide to Cabling Computers and Telephone in Homes and Apartments (Spiral-bound)

This is the first cabling book I've ever purchased, and I'm very happy with it. It's made clear a lot of things that the phone techs are doing at work while I'm just staring blankly at rows of punchdown blocks. Now it makes some sense!

This book has excellent diagrams and it presents information at a very basic and understandable level. It covers the very basics (what is a network interface device? what tools should I have?) all the way through suggestions for keeping your newly installed cables safe and neatly bundled. That said, there are some things that could use some work:

1) Some (really not very many) of the diagrams are a bit too small to read easily. They can be read, but it sometimes involves a bit of squinting (or I suppose I could use a sheet magnifier, but I'd rather resist that sign of aging).

2) There are occassional references to chapters and topics that don't seem to exist (e.g., reference to a discussion of terminating DB25 or DB9 connectors in chapter 9 -- there are only 7 chapters!)

3) There are some sentence fragments, typos, and other minor editorial matters, but they're generally nothing worse than mildly irritating. As a beginner, I can't really say whether they've changed the meaning of anything important.

As others have mentioned, this book can stand alone, but I think it's really at its finest as a complement to Mike's Basic Guide to Cabling Computers and Telephones (which I've since purchased; that one talks about terminating DB25 and DB9 connectors).

All-in-all, a really excellent book. Very basic, direct, and well-priced.