Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!jack!crash!pnet01!haitex
From: haitex@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: RS232 indignation
Message-ID: <2292@crash.cts.com>
Date: 6 Jan 88 15:36:13 GMT
Sender: news@crash.cts.com
Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA
Lines: 47

glee@cognos.uucp (Godfrey Lee) writes:
>In article <2188@crash.cts.com> haitex@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel) writes:
>>        If the standards people wanted to do things RIGHT, they would
>>     have made only one connector type.
>>
>>        For instance:   make the left half of the connector male, and
>>                            the right half female.  Make the connector
>>                            so that it can plug into itself.  Whalla!
>>                            No more problems.  UniSex cables!
>
>That's just wonderful! What type of connector do you suggest the box have,
>male? female? Arrrgh. That is exactly the problem with RS232, which assumes
>that there are two types of boxes, ie. computers and terminals, and cables
>are supposed to be pass thru devices (male one end, female the other end,
>all pins straight thru). This is fine until someone invented PCs, well,
>actually, someone decided that it would be neat to connect computer to

        Perhaps a visual example will suffice:


                        |   computer A  |
                        |               |
                        |    OO!!       |       O = female, ! = male
                        -----------------

                             !!OO                <-- one end of the cable
                             ||||
                             ||||
                             OO!!                <-- other end of cable

                        -----------------
                        |    !!00       |        <-- note same pattern,
                        |               |               box is reversed.
                        |   computer B  |


        As you can see, all computer would also use the same connector
with this scheme.  Of course to be reliable all pins would have to be
carried across the cable.

                                                Thanks,

                                                        Wade.

UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!haitex
ARPA: crash!pnet01!haitex@nosc.mil
INET: haitex@pnet01.CTS.COM