The "DB-this" and "DB-that" naming originated by ignorant analogy with the (correctly-named) DB-25 connectors that the DE-9s were replacing. Hint: The letter after the D is the size. DBs had room for two rows of 12 and 13 pins on 1/10 inch centers, on down to DE with room for only 4 and 5 pins with that spacing. Later, the DE shell was used with closer spacing for three rows of pins, for video monitor cables.

Once enough ignorant people took to calling them DB-9 and trying to buy them by that name, the vendors started hawking them that way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature#DE-9

This reminds me of Things I Won't Work With mentioning Chinese chemical supply houses that list prices for a gallon of a specific chemical, when there probably hasn't been that much made in all of human history together, and if it were made and brought together in one place, the resulting crater would be visible on Google Earth.

I arrived at a somewhat less robust solution which involved a DB-25 cable and a hack saw.

This of course failed and I discovered the situation on Friday at 5:30pm just as the local Maplin had shut.

(And now that you can order, for the first time, a new Amiga with an open source operating system, you don't need the DB-23 anymore, it uses HDMI. Vampire v4 stand alone. No affiliation, just fascinated.)

http://apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=1&note=23461

There was a good article about it here that was on HN a few days ago:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2019/10/22/the-...

I may have mixed things up, I'm not closely monitoring this, but I think you could pre-order it somewhere. Maybe it was only existing customers or something, it was something I saw on the FB group I think!)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Rear_por...

It was possible to hand-make a replacement for Atari's external floppy drive (round DIN connector on the right) because Atari wanted too much money for theirs. Having two floppies meant that compiling went from several disk-swaps to no-swap happiness.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tascam_Digital_Interface [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES3

Of course, their current digital mixers don't have any D-shell connectors.

https://apogeedigital.com/products/symphony-io/configuration...

I mean, I can't afford $5K for that, but it's there.

[1]: According to market forces.

An analogy is when celebrities make a million dollars and think that they are rich, only to spend it all and find that they owe half a million dollars in taxes. After selling their possessions and settling with the IRS, they sometimes end up with nothing.

The fallacy is thinking that since you have something in hand, you can always get it again.

True prosperity would be more along the lines of true wealth.

For example, having a business or investment that pays dividends for life. $1 million is actually worth about $50,000/year at 5% interest, and in practice probably less.

We should be living in an era where our basic needs and trivial manufactured goods like a DB-19 connector are readily available or easily manufactured from scratch. We shouldn't have to buy in large lots from mysterious manufacturers halfway around the world.

As a child of the 80s, I'm seeing a lot of shiny consumer electronic goods but the almost total loss of any kind of autonomy. We can't do things anymore that used to be taken for granted, like repair our own tools or cars, barter medical work for venison, work part time and go to school, you get the idea.

I'm hopeful that this might change after the next recession though, kind of like how everyone pulled themselves up after the 2008 housing bubble popped and got the mobile/social and gig economies moving. Kind of sad if it comes to that though.

exactly where did you live in the 80's?

I grew up in Idaho and went through a couple of recessions. Most of the TV/movies from that time like Family Ties and Ferris Bueller's Day Off portray it as prosperous, but it was really more like South Park.

My dad practiced dentistry for many years but due to some house fires and other setbacks, we didn't have money until I was about 15. So I grew up eating a lot of lamb, deer, elk, farm fresh eggs, etc that he got when he traded out dental work because nobody had much money.

So what I was trying to say is, real prosperity to me would look more like if the 80s and 90s had continued so the US still had its manufacturing base today. A bit more like how Germany has prospered.

Instead we have the appearance for prosperity for most, but the bottom income half of the US is really struggling right now with multiple jobs, high debts, and not nearly as strong of a social safety net as we had then. So I question why that is necessary when some people are doing so phenomenally well. To me, America lost its way after the dot bomb around 2000 and never really recovered. Maybe I'm reaching though, if I'm seeing conspiracies just because we can't find a discontinued connector, which I fully admit haha.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59FWrLZfdli...

particularly parts 10-13 I believe are where the pins and contacts come into play.

A/B testing?