On 18 May 2014 02:51:57 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2014-05-17, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Fri, 16 May 2014 12:30:55 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:


Tom Gardner wrote:

I had a huge struggle with soldering a couple of DB-9 connectors, my

[ ... ]

BTW, it isn't a DB-9, it is a DE-9. The second letter is the shell
size. The common 25 pin shell is a 'B'. The SVGA monitor plug is a
HDE-15.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature

Interesting! Even when I was buying them for computers/cables I
built, they were always listed as DB-9s.

The people who know what they are doing will recognize them
anyway, knowing that there is no such thing as a DB-9, and the use of
the common wrong name makes those who don't know satisfied that they got
what they asked for.

The letter sequence is weird, BTW. Assuming the two rows of
individual pins, they are "DA-15", "DB-25", "DC-37" "DD-50" (really three
rows) and finally "DE-9".

Funky.


The 9-pin size was an afterthought, and you can't back up to a
letter before 'A' unlike being able to back up '1' to '0' (or even minus
numbers at need). :-)

Strange, because the serial port was one of the first used on
computers. Hmm, PCs, anyway. Maybe that's my problem. I started
late, trained in '88 and building computers in '90. I had to pass up
a job at the Miramar Naval Air Station because I didn't have any
experience with bubble memory. (I think my textbook covered it in two
sentences or so.) I would have liked that job, working on the F-16
flight simulators...but it would have been a hellish drive each way
every day.


I don't know for sure who originated the series, but the first
ones I remember were made by Canon, and had white Nylon insulators,
which happily melted as you were soldering, so if you weren't quick
enough at it, you wind up with the pin at an angle as the Nylon hardens
again. :-)

Indeed. DAMHIKT. sigh

--
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is
no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.
--Henry David Thoreau