AVR Freaks

Pretty good list Jim, thanks!

Hafta admit I'm kinda curious where you get connectors that are NOT industry standard.  I've built a gazillion systems with DE-9 connectors, both male and female, and the only ones that got a serial port plugged into them were the ones intended for it.  Nobody ever tried to plug an EGA monitor or a serial mouse into one (at least, that they admitted).

I do agree with you in principle, and at least on standalone systems I generally try to use different connectors (either by size or gender or both) wherein mixing up the cables is a) easy and b) catastrophic, but if the user won't follow the labeling and something goes bang, that's their ass.  Making them responsible is a great way of making them careful.

Yes, things do go bang occasionally, too.  I give them about the same respect as they would get from sticking a fork into an electrical socket.

As is true of pretty much all engineering, it's a tradeoff.  If you want distinct unique connectors for everything, you can have it - for a screaming cost.  For something designed for the International Space Station, maybe that's appropriate (not really.  My ISS design used DB-25s).  For something cheap and cheerful like an egg-timer or a teabag dunking machine, I'll go with the standard with the cheapest cabling costs - And those tend to be the mass-market standards, because every cable manufacturer in China is cranking them out by the container load.

It's also worth noting that little of what I make goes out into the wild public - Almost all of it is custom-made for a single customer who gets instructions on what to connect where.  Even then sometimes they get it wrong, and I get to tell them their warranty don't cover that.

S.

PS - not sure anyone does this anymore, but an old dirty trick was to pull a certain pin from the male connector(s), then plug up that corresponding hole in the female socket.  Pull different pins from different connectors, and there's your unique connectors.  Of course, some simian would just mash them home anyhow, and then wonder why a) it went bang, and b) why there's all these bent pins on their connectors...  S.