Re: DB-19 cable from old Mac 400K ext drive - compatible?

[david@uow.edu.au (David E A Wilson)]

tdiaz@127.0.0.1 (Tony Diaz) writes:
>In article <5jb88m$go3@lynx.unm.edu>, buggie@musca.unm.edu (stephen e
>buggie) wrote:

>> Several years ago, I attached db-19 cables from old Mac external 400K 
>> drives to Disk II drives, with good results.
>> But when I tried the same thing with a batch of 3 such Mac 400K cables, 
>> the drives did not respond well.

>I do it all the time, I love those nice short cables. Most every drive I
>have here has those on them. Not all 3rd party/clone analog cards like it
>though.

When I had a look at the cable from a Mac 400K drive I found it to be missing
one wire used on the Disk ][ drive - the minus 12 volt line. Some drives
may work without this, others need it.
 
This brings to mind my pet peeve about D type connectors - everyone calls
them DB-xx connectors. They are actually DA-15, DB-25, DC-37, DD-50 and
DE-9. In addition a 15 pin VGA connector would be a DE-15 as the letter
describes the size of the connector and the number is the pin count. I
have no idea what a 19 pin connector (nor the 23 pin used on Amiga disk
drives) should be called.
--
David Wilson	Dept CompSci Uni Wollongong Australia	david@cs.uow.edu.au