Re: Super Serial Card Question?

[Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> Further, there has always been a design bias toward making connectors
> that are installed on a box be female, to make it less likely that they
> would be damaged (bent pins) and require a difficult replacement.

Perhaps, though for RS-232 (now TIA/EIA-232F), the standard was to
use male connectors on DTEs, and female connectors on DCEs.

> I suspect the IBM PC designers would have followed the same convention
> except that they reused the DB-25 for both the serial and the parallel
> ports, making a gender shift in one desirable from a human engineering
> point of view.

That might be why.  Or it might be that they were actually following
the RS-232 best practices, since the PC serial port is wired as DTE.

> One could argue that they should have decided to make the parallel port
> male,

One could even better argue that they should have used some connector
other than a DB25.

Sigh.