You’ve seen them everywhere, especially on older computer equipment: the classic 9-pin serial connector. You probably know it as a DB9. It’s an iconic connector for makers, engineers, and anyone who’s ever used an RS232 serial device. Here’s a little secret, though: calling it a DB9 is technically wrong. The correct name is actually DE9.
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I honestly had no idea, and looking through the Wikipedia page, it seems this isn’t the only common misnomer when it comes to D-sub connectors.
DS9? – Sisko
While they are technically right, I think that trying to correct it now may actually cause more harm than good. The world already knows it as DB-9, DB-9 worked fine as a name for so many decades. Introducing products as DE-9 now just makes things more confusing and harder to find for zero benefit.
DE-9 connectors makes for really interesting trivia and a fun article. But correct or not I think I’ll stick to the more common terminology when I need a DB-9 connector.
Ask someone to tell you if the D-connector is male or female. 95% will get it wrong.
Really? Maybe it’s just the resources I grew up with as a nerdy kid, but it seems pretty intuitive to me that the one with the pins is male and the one with the holes is female.
…now asking someone to assign plug/socket nomenclature correctly? That I can understand.
Pins vs sockets is not always an indicator of male vs female in the world of multi-circuit connectors. One of my duties at work is designing and building cables using such connectors, and both Deutsch and AMP CPC style connectors consider the side with the sockets as male, and the side with pins the female. Why? Because the socketed connector fits inside and is surrounded by the pinned connector. In other words it’s the connector as a whole that determines gender, not what’s inside the connector.
I was referring specifically to D-Subminiature connectors, where all the docs I have access to agree that “that the one with the pins is male and the one with the holes is female”.
I certainly agree that male/female gets complicated in other contexts.
With D-Sub connectors the side with the sockets happens to fit inside the one with the pins. Once again, it’s the connector as a whole that determines gender and not the pin/socket configuration. Your said your intuition was about pins/sockets but your docs agree with you only because it so happens that D-Subs are socket-side-female. Other connector types are pin-side-female which clashes with your intuition.
It’s only complicated if you refuse to accept that pin/socket has nothing to do with it, it’s always about the connector as a whole.
Morgan,
Naturally whoever makes the connectors will define which part is male and which is female, but I think people have different intuitions about which parts should matter. For some it makes logical sense for the pins to be male and their sockets to be female. The ambiguity happens because of the mixed signals leaving things up for interpretation. Einstein would have called this “socket relativity”, haha.
Say someone invented a new A/C outlet where the pins had s safety shroud to cover the pins and the outlet had to protrude the socket under the shroud. Obviously your logic would be to look at the connector instead of the pins and call the plug side female, and the socket male, but I suspect some would still find it logical to for the plug to be male and the socket to be female. it’s interesting how people can look at the exact same thing and come up with different opinions.
That might be your intutition but it is wrong according to all documentation I have seen. The side with the pins is the male.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_connectors_and_fasteners
Quote: “For example, the female D-subminiature connector body projects outward from the mounting plane of the chassis, and this protrusion could be erroneously construed as male. Instead, the gender is determined by the innermost part, the male pins, rather than by the protrusion of the connector that fits inside the shield of the mating connector”
True, but it’s hard to break old habits. Just like it’s and 8P8C connector, not RJ-45. Meh.