[benjiboy]

I'm looking for a hot shoe cable to get ttl metering with off-camera flash for my Minolta system. I see that the electrical contact on a Pentax ME Super is different from that on the Minolta X570 and x700 which is still different from my 3-year old digital. It looks like there are 2, 3, and 4 contacts respectively. I'm using a Minolta flash made for the x-series.

Just how careful do I need to be choosing a cable to correctly pass all the information?

I believe your'e on a wild goose chase because neither the ME Super, the Minolta X570 or the X700 cameras had TTL flash metering capability's, whatever flash lead you use the best they could manage was a flash ready indication in the viewfinder, TTL flash was a development in later models.