Mastodawn

The Retro Timer 💾3d ago

It’s weird when you realize plugs and sockets used to be so huge you could just label individual pins.

Chris Petrilli 3d ago

@mwichary if only Cannon connectors didn't cost their weight in gold because... hooo they are NICE.

Daniel Carosone 3d ago

DA PWR

Geoff Coffey 3d ago

@mwichary Ah yes remember pins? Bent pins. Broken pins. It was a magical time when you could look at a connector and see what was wrong with it.

Marcin Wichary 3d ago

@gwcoffey Yeahhhh https://unsung.aresluna.org/before-i-knew-it-i-had-four-damaged-sockets-and-three-bad-cables/

“Before I knew it, I had four damaged sockets and three bad cables” – Unsung

A blog about software craft and quality

Geoff Coffey 3d ago

@mwichary Gah. Truly amazing. Anyway if you need me I’ll be over here tweaking my scsi addresses and swapping out terminators to get these two drives to work at the same time.

Thalia Archibald 3d ago

@gwcoffey @mwichary I'll be learning how to do that very soon for my two magneto-optical SCSI drives.

Geoff Coffey 3d ago

@thalia @mwichary Old people like me love to gabble about this stuff but actually 9 times out of 10 scsi just worked fine haha. I hope that’s the case for your drives! I haven’t seen an MO drive in ages.

@mwichary @gwcoffey just make the pins big enough again to not bend like that! ;)

Geoff Coffey 3d ago

@colinstu @mwichary Have you ever stuck one of those telephone switch board connectors into their socket before. So satisfying. I want those all over my house.

Raul Portales 3d ago

@mwichary my personal favourite is the DB-9 used for the joysticks of 8-bit computers

Magnus Ahltorp 3d ago

@Sh41 @mwichary That particular one doesn't seem to have individually numbered pins, though. But it was really common, even if it was only by relief.

Marcin Wichary 3d ago

@ahltorp @Sh41 It does! Look closely.

Raul Portales 3d ago

@mwichary @ahltorp that was just an online image, I'm sure my old #MSX has them.

BRB I'll get it out and take an actual pic

Raul Portales 3d ago

@mwichary @ahltorp ok. They don't have the numbers, but how cool is the Joystick 1 & 2 font?

Magnus Ahltorp 3d ago

@mwichary @Sh41 Ok, I really thought they were JPEG artifacts, but now I see something that could be the correct numbers.

I think my problem was that I looked *too* closely, because then you see so many JPEG artifacts that the real things get lost in them!

@mwichary Damn those are some sexy connectors!

Thalia Archibald 3d ago

@mwichary I saw this DD-78 cable the other day, which connects to eight DE-9 cables.
It's listed for $200 🤯. https://www.ebay.com/itm/117236893127

Stewart Russell 3d ago

@mwichary and those Cannons were originally known as "miniature" connectors

mrpommer 3d ago

@mwichary Please tell me the next book is the history of connectors!

Marcin Wichary 3d ago

@mrpommer “Why I hate SCART and other stories.”

Karl Swanson 3d ago

@mwichary we still use a lot of these multipin connectors in the audio industry.

Brian Nehring 2d ago

@mwichary I worked with those D38999 cables fairly recently for the military. They work nice but very expensive!

Scott K. Tusing 2d ago

@mwichary I still use connectors like this nearly every day!

Marcin Wichary 2d ago

@sktusing MUST BE NICE

Scott K. Tusing 2d ago

@mwichary nothing quite like 208v of power that hopefully mates correctly.

@mwichary
*squints* a typewriter with a cannon? not sure if @NanoRaptor was involved with that connector...