DB-19: Resurrecting an Obsolete Connector (2016)
bigmessowires.com
bigmessowires.com
I work in manufacturing and this sentence made me feel so many feelings. Surprise that this worked, envy that this worked, remorse on how hard we try to make things precise AND THIS WORKED. Just so, so many feelings.
except we don't even compile programs anymore... (in the traditional sense, anyway; I try to look the other way when build engineering does dark magic with webpacks and esbuilds)
It is the equivalent of code that compiles and runs successfully at the first attempt. It is nice, and with experience easier to achieve. But it is still part lucky.
Of course there's still a huge risk with DB-19 being a semi-custom format. Sure, it's almost certainly derived from the standard, but are you willing to bet the cash equivalent of a car that they didn't slightly tweak it for one reason or another?
Since there are so many compatible drawings out there of D-subs, it's easy to find one that shows the breakdown of why the measurements are what they are. From there, you can easily backtrack and get the exact dimensions of a DA19P.
> Early on, it became clear they’d need more specific directions than simply “make it like a DB-9 but with more pins.”
(And given that drawings used to be hand drawn with pencil and paper, you have way more ton of precision control in a non-linear tool like Photoshop that gives you precise measurements than some rulers and those types of tools.)
You do gave to then splice that wire to a 9 serial. But thats not too hard and with some shrink tubing it'll look great.
[1] I think the connector is a fairly standard part.in the 90s, though, we were flooded with those cables so the tutorials just had us use those
3 of the 4 wires (RX, TX, and GND) would then be soldered to a DB-9 female plug.
It is the colloquial term for the connector (regardless of what the 'official' name may be):
> Several computers also used a non-standard 19-pin D-sub connector, sometimes called DB-19,[8] including Macintosh (external floppy drive), Atari ST (external hard drive), and NeXT (Megapixel Display monitor[9] and laser printer).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature#Common_misnomer...
* https://iec.net/what-is-a-db19-connector/
* https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=db19+connector
> The early Macintosh and late Apple II computers used a non-standard 19-pin D-sub for connecting external floppy disk drives.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature#Other
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mac512k-rear_DB-19_Smartp...
But ostensibly, everyone who needs to know will know what is meant when a person says "DB9," and thus it works fine.
(Relatedly, the connector used for Ethernet is not an RJ45.)
Wait, what? I cannot find a single source on Google for this - they all say RJ45 is the correct term.
If it's not an RJ45, what is it?
The only thing RJ45 has in common with Ethernet is that it used the same 8P8C-sized connector. But even then, RJ45 had a key notch on the side and Ethernet does not.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_jack#RJ45S
For RJ standards, an S suffix signifies that it is a "single line" circuit.
A given jack on a wall in a given office could be wired for a regular single-pair phone, or for Ethernet, or for both -- even at the same time (using the same cabling), as a design intent.
Of course this doesn't work with the gigabit spec we all wound up using, but it was never a popular option to begin with (and nowadays, we usually have VOIP if we even bother with desk phones at all).
However when it came time to specify the pinout when designing ethernet over utp they found the separation required to place the wires like this was too great and degraded the characteristics of the line so they placed a pair on each side keeping the center as is for some sort of compatibility. Like said you could have a phone line in the center of your ethernet. suck to be you it you did that then later wanted to upgrade to gigabit. It also suck if you had some idiot doing the wiring who had the bright idea "herp derp, two pairs of this are not used... I could run two ethernet lines over this cable"
Which is sort of my next complaint, tia-568, the intent was to have the A standard be used with the B standard for compatibility with existing phone lines . Every place I have ever been they just used the B standard. I mean it is not a huge deal, but it always bugged me.
It used to be quite common to see a serial port wired in a B shell, sometimes with just three pins, making a DB-3.
If you were making the point that I shouldn’t care if a bird were a raven or a crow in the background of a painting, sure, that would be pedantry (unless there were some important symbolism). But this is a simple case where a modicum of accuracy can make a big difference.
"The DB-19 isn’t really a B shell and probably shouldn’t be called “DB” anything if you’re being precise about naming. Apple called it DB-19 in their documentation, though, and the name stuck."
So maybe he did sell them all.
https://shop.bigmessowires.com/products/floppy-emu-model-c-b...
It looks like they've sold tens of thousands of these.
If we guess 50,000 at $129, with say a 30% profit margin, which might be low for hobbyist markets, its $2m net. These "little" enthusiast markets are much larger and lucrative than I thought.
For above 10 I'd make a jig to either cut and punch holes in 3mm plexiglass sheets, or a jig to quickly make cardboard moulds into which I'd place the pins and pour resin into.
To me, either of the above is preferable to ordering 10k of them.
The most common example is perhaps the Atari 2600's molded female joystick connector, but I've also seen male iterations (usually on IDC connectors).
Other than lack durability and lack of built-in shielding, I don't see any problem with the idea of 3D printing such a thing.
With a decent resin printer, one should even be able to design it to use removable pins that just snap into place (which are things that are still made in factories every day).
I'm glad that didn't result in five figures of group-buy money wasted.
I think to myself, "how strange! even if the manufacturer isn't willing to pay for the standard, it's got to be worth it for the guy who's trying to get them built!"
A small bit of Wikipedia browsing followed, in which I realized that I've been laboring under a decades-long misapprehension that the D in D-sub connectors stands for DIN. Nope, just the shape, and not a DIN, or ANSI, or ISO standard. Just de facto.
Note that this isn't totally insane, there are in fact DIN connectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector. Just so happens that D-sub connectors have nothing to do with them.
Always more to learn...
You don't really want to pay full price anyway.
Edit: there's some discussion about female counterparts in the comment section of the website.
(*once had an HDMI soften over time due to all the heat spewing out of the graphics card it plugged into, took a few cables before I found one that didn't want to melt)
Couldn't find any female connectors (for the motherboard) though.
Plus there are FPGA Amigas, but that is another matter.
There's also weird resistor or capacity pack somewhere that doesn't have a modern replacement.
You can get an entire Amiga as an FPGA, but that's a little different than a chip for chip replacement.
Can't tell how complete it is, but they are on a mission. :-D