Anyone know anything about old TEC Terminals?

Mr Ian Primus wrote: Indeed, I couldn't say whether I ever saw a terminal that was actually *electrically* wired as DCE, but there was no shortage of terminals and other equipment that got the gender wrong. I don't have the RS232 spec in front of me but I have always been of the understanding that it explicitly specifies that DCE shall be a female connector and DTE male. You should be able to simply look at the gender of the connector and know whether it was DCE or DTE. You would also be able to look at a cable and know (in part) what it did: a M-F cable would be straight thru, a F-F cable would be a null modem. It has always been a source of annoyance (to me) with such equipment that you can't rely on this and have to check everything. (Either that or somebody correct me about the spec.!) I actually just received an old (70s) RS232 breakout box. Rather than having a male and a female DB25 which would make it trivial to insert in a line, it has two female DB25s, which not only violates the spec but pretty much guarantees that you're going to have to monkey around with an additional gender-changing cable whenever you use it!