4 ms·

DB-19 Substitute, Take Two

56 points by yuhong 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
mikepurvis 11y ago
Surprising to me that it isn't more cost effective to use the female connector as a jig in manufacturing a PCB-based solution, or maybe a halfway, where it's a PCB anchoring the male pins and then a 3D-printed shell. There are also generic round pins available, though they're probably skinnier than the standard d-shell ones: http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/TS-106-G-A/SAM1111-06-ND/1105456 http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/TS-106-G-A/SAM1111-0... Another potential janky solution would be a partially-populated DB-25.
cmrdporcupine 11y ago
The Atari ST series also used a DB-19 connector, for its DMA/ACSI (variant of SCSI) port. This has been a hassle recently for the Atari community. If the author of the article is interested in producing and selling new DB-19 male/female connectors, I'm sure he'd find customers in the ST community.
userbinator 11y ago
There's definitely companies in China who will do custom connectors, and since a DB-19 is not exactly "custom" but just a different configuration of an existing one, it might not be so expensive. MOCs are still going to be high though.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  This guy has already explored pretty much every avenue to get more of these connectors: http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/03/20/finding-a-db-19-angering-the-internet/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/03/20/finding-a-db-19-ange... http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/01/designing-a-db-19-substitute/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/01/designing-a-db-19-su... http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/02/bagging-the-db-19/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/02/bagging-the-db-19/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/12/db-19-madness/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/12/db-19-madness/
goldenkey 11y ago
First flappy bird, now floppy emus. Im entranced by our culture guys :-)
xkcd-sucks 11y ago
Hopefully he gets a bunch manufactured and resells them-- This is the guy that bought up most of the world's db19 connectors for an old apple floppy emu, leaving NeXT computer enthusiasts to use such alternatives as chopped off db25 connectors/19x pin-to-pin wires as monochrome monitor/bus cables
- wereHamster 11y ago
  Who else needs/uses those connectors?
- bsder 11y ago
  So, why don't you guys band together with him and cut the mold? $10,000 isn't that much spread over 3 different communities. (Apple, NeXT, Atari ST). Yet, nobody is stepping up to cut a check. Perhaps I should call you all a bunch of cheap bastards. $109 for the board, bill of materials, and software work that has gone into it is CHEAP. If he were charging $150, he could probably cut the mold himself. However, he knows his business. Presumably, if he could charge more, he would.
bsder 11y ago
Did anyone call Sullins Connector Corp? (I feel like I'm repeating myself, for some reason. Did I suggest this last year?) http://sullinscorp.com/ http://sullinscorp.com/ They probably made that Apple connector originally. I see that they've EOL'd their DB lines just last year, but they might still have the molds. They might be willing to keep a single DB-19 mold if they know that they've got a captive order every year. I really recommend them if you need a connector. They were awesome to deal with.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
elfchief 11y ago
This reminds me of what I went through back in ~2004 with a VW wiring harness. I had a product (a little toy that would give better control over the automatically-deploying spoiler behavior on turbocharged New Beetles) that was built around one specific VW wiring harness. Apparently not many extras of the harnesses were manufactured, because after we bought ~15 of them (just enough for our first small run), the main distributor for parts in the US ran out of them. We got a few more by having some dealers do nationwide parts searches for us, but we had basically ended up buying out the entire country for this particular harness. We spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to work around this. We'd really hoped that we would be able to just construct the harnesses ourselves, but the connectors ended up being custom parts that the OEM was unwilling to sell to us. For a while we thought about giving people a discount on the product if they'd send their old harness to us, but we only had a couple left at the time, so that would really end up trashing our throughput. In the end, we just ended up waiting until their was new stock available, almost a year later. It really sucked to have a product that a bunch of people wanted, and not be able to ship it because of a couple of connectors! Anyhow, yeah ... I feel the author's pain.
Animats 11y ago
The pins are standard and on some types of connector, are crimped first, then pushed into the housing block. All you need to manufacture is the plastic housing block. That's a reasonable part to have made by commercial 3D printing.
gaur 11y ago
Wow. I always figured (naively) that dsubs were available with whatever (odd) number of pins you wanted.

56 points by yuhong 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

mikepurvis 11y ago

Surprising to me that it isn't more cost effective to use the female connector as a jig in manufacturing a PCB-based solution, or maybe a halfway, where it's a PCB anchoring the male pins and then a 3D-printed shell. There are also generic round pins available, though they're probably skinnier than the standard d-shell ones: http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/TS-106-G-A/SAM1111-06-ND/1105456 http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/TS-106-G-A/SAM1111-0... Another potential janky solution would be a partially-populated DB-25.

cmrdporcupine 11y ago

The Atari ST series also used a DB-19 connector, for its DMA/ACSI (variant of SCSI) port. This has been a hassle recently for the Atari community. If the author of the article is interested in producing and selling new DB-19 male/female connectors, I'm sure he'd find customers in the ST community.

userbinator 11y ago

There's definitely companies in China who will do custom connectors, and since a DB-19 is not exactly "custom" but just a different configuration of an existing one, it might not be so expensive. MOCs are still going to be high though.

gherkin0 11y ago
This guy has already explored pretty much every avenue to get more of these connectors: http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/03/20/finding-a-db-19-angering-the-internet/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/03/20/finding-a-db-19-ange... http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/01/designing-a-db-19-substitute/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/01/designing-a-db-19-su... http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/02/bagging-the-db-19/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/02/bagging-the-db-19/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/12/db-19-madness/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/12/db-19-madness/

goldenkey 11y ago

First flappy bird, now floppy emus. Im entranced by our culture guys :-)

xkcd-sucks 11y ago

Hopefully he gets a bunch manufactured and resells them-- This is the guy that bought up most of the world's db19 connectors for an old apple floppy emu, leaving NeXT computer enthusiasts to use such alternatives as chopped off db25 connectors/19x pin-to-pin wires as monochrome monitor/bus cables

wereHamster 11y ago
Who else needs/uses those connectors?
bsder 11y ago
So, why don't you guys band together with him and cut the mold? $10,000 isn't that much spread over 3 different communities. (Apple, NeXT, Atari ST). Yet, nobody is stepping up to cut a check. Perhaps I should call you all a bunch of cheap bastards. $109 for the board, bill of materials, and software work that has gone into it is CHEAP. If he were charging $150, he could probably cut the mold himself. However, he knows his business. Presumably, if he could charge more, he would.

bsder 11y ago

Did anyone call Sullins Connector Corp? (I feel like I'm repeating myself, for some reason. Did I suggest this last year?) http://sullinscorp.com/ http://sullinscorp.com/ They probably made that Apple connector originally. I see that they've EOL'd their DB lines just last year, but they might still have the molds. They might be willing to keep a single DB-19 mold if they know that they've got a captive order every year. I really recommend them if you need a connector. They were awesome to deal with.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

elfchief 11y ago

This reminds me of what I went through back in ~2004 with a VW wiring harness. I had a product (a little toy that would give better control over the automatically-deploying spoiler behavior on turbocharged New Beetles) that was built around one specific VW wiring harness. Apparently not many extras of the harnesses were manufactured, because after we bought ~15 of them (just enough for our first small run), the main distributor for parts in the US ran out of them. We got a few more by having some dealers do nationwide parts searches for us, but we had basically ended up buying out the entire country for this particular harness. We spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to work around this. We'd really hoped that we would be able to just construct the harnesses ourselves, but the connectors ended up being custom parts that the OEM was unwilling to sell to us. For a while we thought about giving people a discount on the product if they'd send their old harness to us, but we only had a couple left at the time, so that would really end up trashing our throughput. In the end, we just ended up waiting until their was new stock available, almost a year later. It really sucked to have a product that a bunch of people wanted, and not be able to ship it because of a couple of connectors! Anyhow, yeah ... I feel the author's pain.

Animats 11y ago

The pins are standard and on some types of connector, are crimped first, then pushed into the housing block. All you need to manufacture is the plastic housing block. That's a reasonable part to have made by commercial 3D printing.

gaur 11y ago

Wow. I always figured (naively) that dsubs were available with whatever (odd) number of pins you wanted.