Free DEC SCSI cable, centronics 50 male to 68 pin female (HD68?) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

11 Nov 2006

On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:41:28 -0500, Warren Wolfe <wizard at voyager.net>  
wrote:

...
  On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 00:47 +0000, Tony Duell wrote:

   I've
heard them called Amphenol, CHAMP, telco, PBX and RJ21X
 connectors as well as "Blue Ribbon" (shows my age).  But why
 "Centronics"? 
 I normally call them 'Blue Ribbon' -- what should be be calling them?
 Amphenol make (made?) a very large range of connectors, so that  
 name is
 nowhere near specific enough... 

     It must be that "two great cultures separated by a common language
 thing.  The big, hooded connectors have been identified well here.   
 Most
 places I have been refer to them as "Amphenol connectors," unless they
 are specifically for parallel printers, in which case people refer to
 them as Centronics cables.

     The cables made from ribbon cable, with crimp-on square plastic
 headers are called, around these parts, "Berg cables" or "ribbon
 cables," due to the "Berg connectors," as Berg made most of them at  
 one
 time. 
Amphenol, the inventor of this type of connector, calls the current  
connectors "Micro Ribbon". The original connector had connector  
widths at least twice that of the current connectors and IIRC were  
called "Blue Ribbon". You occasionally find them on old ('50s) gear -  
especially old military radios and scientific equipment. The Micro  
Ribbon 25 pair format was initially used big time  by the telecom  
folks to hook up PBX systems and then transitioned to the computer  
field where Centronic used the 36 connector version for what became  
the ubiquitous printer port.

Among us old farts the name has stuck whereby we refer to all  
connectors of that type as "Blue Ribbon" - nothing to do with blue  
ribbon-cables - where all the newbies call them "Centronics".

	CRC