On Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:03:20 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

There's no such thing as a perfect connector system.

Yes, but some are _lot_ less perfect than others.

You're being overly generous. Methinks they all suck. I forgot to
mention that some companies, specifically Motorola Land Mobile, offers
new mic and power connectors with every series of radios. The idea is
not to improve the connector, but to render all the old accessories
instantly obsolete. Special care has obviously been exercised in
preventing adapters from working. Even the antenna connectors are
often unique, especially on handhelds. In ham radio, the big three
(Yeasu, Icom, Kenwood) all use 2.5 and 3.5mm connector pairs for the
microphone and handset. No two schemes are the same, or even close.
Standards are a good thing... every company should have one.

Extra credit to Dell, Apple and others, for using DisplayPort on their
products, instead of the more common HDMI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort
There's a 4 cents per connector royalty on HDMI. Just think of the
savings.

Be sure to thank the computer gods that only Apple, IBM, and
consortiums are allowed to introduce new connectors into computers, or
we would face the same instant accessory obsolescence issues found in
commerical two-way radio.

I didn't mention that I broke the S connector on my S-VHS VCR. I never got
around to fixing it. I'm sure I've broken one or two connectors on other
equipment, but they don't come quickly to mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Video

S-video connectors will tolerate very little lateral stress. Pull on
the cable sideways, and something will bend or break. My problem with
such Mini-DIN connectors is the lack of any retention mechanism (i.e.
friction, leaf springs, lock, etc). When I pull the hi-fi away from
the wall, or out of the rack, the first connectors to unplug
themselves are the s-video connectors. On one customers system, I
tied string around the cable ends, and tied them to one of the binding
posts on the back of the hi-fi, to prevent the cables from falling
into the Gordian Knot behind the equipment pile.

Anyway, it's all academic. Soon, we'll all be doing wireless
everything and we can forget about most tangled cables and broken
connectors. The rest will be fiber, which currently offers a limited
number of creative connectors. Power connectors are already fairly
standard.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558