>> But with a female connector.
> Yes, the standards actually say what kind of connector should be on
> what kind of equipment, but this is the one aspect most commonly
> violated.

Indeed.  I suspect that "RS-232" ports using non-standard connectors
probably outnumber the conforming sort at this point, especially given
the prevalence of DB-9s on peecees.  (And if you count DB-25s of the
wrong sex as "wrong", I'm sure of it.)

> I think DEC have it right.

That's what I recall from reading the standard, though admittedly it
was a *long* time ago.

> I have never seen a modem that pretends to be a DTE (that would be
> wild)

Me neither, though I do own one that has a switch that swaps pins 2 and
3 (TXD and RXD), presumably for use with cables having small numbers of
wires, designed to be null-modem cables or connected to DCE-wired ports
(though what DCE device you'd want to connect a modem to is a bit
baffling).

>> To compilicate things a bit more, some Suns (the ones with A/B text
>> under the RS232 connector) have a second terminal line on the
>> normally unused pins in the same connector.
> Normally unused, yes, but the secondary channels are defined in the
> standard.  Using them the way sun uses them is entirely reasonable,

Quite so.  In my opinion, this is one of the few cases where someone
actually did something unusual but sensible with RS-232. :-)

> They're not as convenient as two connectors - but they're a hell of a
> lot nicer than being stuck with DB9 (or worse, mini DIN 8)
> connectors.

Especially since it means you can wire up a splitter cable with no docs
but a copy of the RS232 pinout spec at hand!

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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