>>> A null modem should only have female connections - it should look
>>> like a modem to both sides.
>> In theory.  But the association of DTE with male and DCE with female
>> is largely dead by now - especially since so many people run serial
>> over completely different connectors, like DE9 or miniDIN-8 or
>> whatever.
> In terms of DB9 and DB25, though, I think the association is still
> there.  In that all the computers I've seen with DB9 and DB25 ports
> have male ones. :-)

DE9 (I've never actually seen a DB9, unless you count a DB25 with 16
pins missing) *and* DB25, probably, since they are almost certainly all
peecees (I don't know anything else schizoid enough to put two
general-purpose serial ports on the same machine and use different
connectors for them.)  But Suns have had DB25F serial ports from as far
back as I can recall (meaning the Sun-2 days) until at least as
recently as the Ultra 2, except when they didn't use DB25 serial at all
(eg, the IPX, which uses miniDIN-8).

>> [O]n my macppc machine, a Power Macintosh 4400, the DB25F on the
>> back is actually the SCSI port.
> You didn't copy the relevant line:
>> mac|minidin8<-minidin8---------db25male<-db25female-db25male->db25female|i386

Right you are.  Mea culpa - both for missing it, and because I agree
that *when you're talking i386* a DB25F is far more likely to be
parallel than serial.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B