EPROM and EEPROM Programmers

Printers, yes, pritning terminals, no :-). Or perhaps, just enforce the convention that a DTE has a plug and a DCE has a socket (the number of manufacturers who got that wrong is amazing -- HP were particularly bad about it!). Then cables with different gender conenctors on the ends are straight, cables with the same gender connectors on the ends are null-modem. If the cable fits, it'll probably work. There's actually an even worse mis-standard, and that's the audio DIN connector. One origianl use was to link a tape recorder to an amplifier -- and the cable was straight-through. Pin 1 was the record signal (output o nthe amplifier, input on the recorder), pin 2 was ground and pin 3 was the playback signal (output on the recorder, input on the amplifier). Stereo just added pins 4 and 5 with the same directions as 1 and 3 for the right hand channel. Now you cna see the problem. How do you wire the socket on another audio device -- say a radio tuner. Well, amaziningly, if you intend it to be connected to an amplidier, you output the signal on pin 3. If you intend it to be conencted to a tape recorder, you output the signal on pin 1. Quite how the user is supposed to guess what the designer was thinking it would be used for in beyond me The reason this is worse than RS232 is that all devices have sockets, all cables end in plugs, So you can't even use that as a way of tellign how it should have been wired. I';ve yet to have problems getting an RS232 connection to work. I just use a breakout box and the schrmatics for the devices involved. -tony