
DB-19: Resurrecting an Obsolete Connector - zdw
http://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/
======
byuu
This is an awesome story!

We faced a similar problem trying to locate someone that could manufacture
otherwise non-existent parts: a 28-pin card edge Super Nintendo expansion port
connector.

The only company we could find that would even consider it wanted $5000-8000
for the initial setup fee, and an MOQ in the thousands. It would have set us
back around $15000, but our potential market is maybe 50-100 sales.

In our case, we ended up finding a wider card-edge connector from Samtec for
an entirely different application, and we dremeled the connector in half, and
then filled the side in with epoxy to create this:
[http://www.qwertymodo.com/hardware-projects/snes/snes-
expans...](http://www.qwertymodo.com/hardware-projects/snes/snes-expansion-
port-connector)

The down-side is, they're not very stable. Sawing them in half and then
filling one end with epoxy results in connectors that have mating cycles rated
in the hundreds at best before the pins stop making clean connections. It also
adds substantially to the workload to hand-dremel the parts. And they're
surface-mount, with the tiniest headers you've ever seen, requiring an expert
to assemble these boards.

Unfortunately, a group-buy isn't really viable for us. But I'm still hopeful
that at some point, we can achieve success with something like the author's
attempts at hand-making things with 3D printing and such.

~~~
desdiv
Could you tell us more about this connector?

What's its pitch? What's the PCB thickness? Would something like this[0] work?

Hit me up if you guys are interested in getting a small batch of this made. My
email is in my profile.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/YOHHuRK.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/YOHHuRK.png?1)

~~~
byuu
Certainly! I'd be very interested in purchasing a small batch of these, and
would be eternally grateful if you could help us! :D

The part we are using now is the Samtec MEC2-(30,40,50)-01-L-DV card edge
connector.

Here is the high level overview version:
[http://suddendocs.samtec.com/catalog_english/mec2.pdf](http://suddendocs.samtec.com/catalog_english/mec2.pdf)

Here is the extreme detail version:
[http://suddendocs.samtec.com/prints/mec2-xx-xx-x-xxx-xx-
xx-m...](http://suddendocs.samtec.com/prints/mec2-xx-xx-x-xxx-xx-xx-mkt.pdf)

If I'm reading things right, the pin pitch is 2mm, and the PCB (card)
thickness is 1.6mm. But unfortunately I don't have calipers to tell you for
certain. I could however get you an SNES deck for analysis ... they're very
cheap.

I'll send you an e-mail as well, thanks again! I hope we can work something
out!

~~~
abakker
Everyone can have a good set of calipers for around $20 from harbor freight.
If you work in any kind of manufacturing hobby, it is worth buying a set.

------
engi_nerd
_Someone_ is still making them. At least, whenever I need some at work, our
warehouse orders them and they appear, in plastic bags with recent
manufactured dates on them. I realize those dates could just be BS.

Or maybe someone upstream of me in the supply chain was smart enough to do a
huge buy?

This gentleman probably has the vast majority available for members of the
public to buy, but I think the US military is probably still paying to have
someone out there make them.

~~~
ghshephard
Curious, what are you using DB-19 interfaces for? And where do you order them
from?

~~~
engi_nerd
Some cards in our data acquisition systems have DB-19 interfaces.

As for where they come from, I don't know, but I could find out if I asked our
parts guy this week.

~~~
yuhong
Can you email the steve@bigmessowires.com folks when you find out the answer?

------
Animats
Nice. This guy has been struggling with that DB-19 connector problem for a
year or two. Finally, he had some made. Sometimes you have to do that for
obsolete parts. I had Teletype tape printer tape made in China a few years
ago.

When dealing with a parts manufacturer in China, it's not uncommon to make a
deal where you pay a premium for a few prototypes, and after those work, you
pay for a volume shipment. Paying for the whole job up front is a big leap of
faith.

~~~
asimuvPR
I would buy one to just be a part of the whole story.

------
bambax
Great story.

Just to add a small data point: in my (limited) experience with Chinese
manufacturers, MOQ rarely survive the first couple of emails.

They like to throw at you impressive MOQ just to see if you're serious, or
maybe as a first try, or maybe because those MOQ are attached to the really
low prices they have quoted elsewhere. But when you inquire further you often
discover that MOQs aren't really binding.

For instance, I was recently told I would have to commit to 50000 pcs (50k!)
of some fabric design... and in fact I'll be able to make less than 500 at a
still very competitive price.

Also, and this may be true everywhere, once you engage with someone they
become invested in your project and will work with you, even against the rules
of their own organization, to make it happen. They won't sell their kids for
you, but they will most certainly chat with the in-house accountant about
MOQs.

------
thought_alarm
Awesome story!

I want to know more about the fabrication process that turned a Photoshopped
DB-25 image into a manufacturable product.

------
WalterBright
> Now you’ve done that maybe you can arrange a production run of DB23’s which
> the Amiga used as its video output.

I had an Amiga for a while, and after discovering they used unique connectors
in order to force you to buy monitors and keyboards from Amiga, I figured it
had no future and sold it.

~~~
brudgers
It's not quite that nefarious. The Amiga connector and video output was
specified in an age when the normal "expensive video upgrade" for a x86
machine was CGA [1] and VGA didn't exist. The reason a consumer had to buy
their monitor from Commodore is that the closest thing in the market was CGA
monitors, pretty much anything equivalent to Commodore's 1080 series would
have been part of a proprietary workstation solution and more expensive,
incompatible, and hard to obtain in a consumer channel.

The alternative to a monitor was an adapter to ordinary televisions. As for
keyboards, Amigas from the Commodore era all included one in the box. It
wasn't an aftermarket item.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter)

~~~
WalterBright
My recollection was at the time it was not better, just different. There was
no reason for a proprietary keyboard, either. Amiga's refusal to work with
commodity hardware meant that it was doomed - it wasn't big enough to force
the issue.

If I recall correctly it couldn't read standard floppy disks either, but I
might recall that wrong.

Microsoft did Apple a huge favor by making the Z80 Softcard for the Apple II.

~~~
gherkin0
> There was no reason for a proprietary keyboard, either. Amiga's refusal to
> work with commodity hardware meant that it was doomed

I do not believe the concept of "commodity hardware" was well established when
the Amiga was introduced in 1985, so faulting them for not using what
eventually _became_ commodity hardware is a little disingenuous.

~~~
WalterBright
The clone business began in 1983 and was well established by 1985. The DEC
Rainbow was introduced in 1982, and it failed largely because it required
special floppy disks that were deliberately different from MS-DOS disks in
order to force people to pay a premium for the disks. The Rainbow was
literally laughed at by DEC junkies that I knew.

I was using clones at the time I bought an Amiga, using commodity hardware,
and nothing would interoperate with the Amiga.

I bought the Amiga intending to invest a lot of time and effort developing
compilers for it. After I discovered its compatibility problems, I knew it
would never succeed and was not going to invest in it. If DEC couldn't succeed
with its pointlessly incompatible Rainbow, how could Amiga?

DEC did eventually fix the Rainbow, but by then its bad reputation was
irretrievably lost. The DEC aficionados who had been holding out for a DEC PC
had thrown in the towel and given up on DEC.

~~~
brudgers
The Apple product line had many of the same attributes as the Amiga.

~~~
WalterBright
Apple predated the IBM PC revolution. And as I mentioned before, Microsoft did
Apple a huge favor by making the Z80 Softcard.

~~~
brudgers
The Amiga 1000 had the sidecar and the 2000 had the bridgeboard. Each had
multiple ISA slots. The first time I saw Windows, it was Version 2.0 on an
A2000.

To me, that seems like more hardware compatibility than a Mac or II.

~~~
WalterBright
Wikipedia suggests the sidecar didn't do well because it was bulky and
expensive.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Sidecar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Sidecar)

~~~
brudgers
It was also fairly rare. Not all that surprising since Amiga 1000's were never
abundant in the wild, at least for a consumer/hobbyist targeted system. Appeal
depended on a mullet like "business in the front, party in the back"
intersection. Such were those days.

------
endgame
Old Apple hardware isn't my jam, but preservation efforts like this are really
important. Congratulations.

------
sundvor
This is a cool story! This is a bit of a nostalgic side note, but I didn't
realise there were even more obscure connectors than my DB-25 I am using today
in my HTPC to AV setup.

DB-25 is what Rotel used for multi channel connectivity 20 years ago, which I
guess made sense at the time but you'd never see it today. I had a Rotel RSP
980 pre-amplifier, Rotel RB-985 amplifier, and Rotel's Dolby Digital decoder -
connected with 2x DB-25 cables. It was fine for my LD, but when moving forward
to using a HTPC around 2005, this required real time DD encoding on the PC
end, something that was not always that easy to get going. Also the Dolby
Digital path didn't exactly give me stellar audio quality. High compressed,
and there was something about the quality of the signal that left me wanting.
Even listening to stereo music meant an enforced, compressed DD path.

In particular I wanted to access DTS HD Master + TrueHD audio, so with no
other multi channel inputs, the alternative would have been to buy a
completely new AV setup to support DTS etc. However the thought occurred to me
that the DB-25 was just an analogue connection, and what if a converter cable
existed? True enough, after much searching I managed to source a DB-25 to 6
RCA connector cable, which then let me hook up an Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe
sound card.

This switch resulted in a massive improvement of sound quality, much thanks to
the excellent Asus product as well, and made using a now 20 year old hifi
system completely viable.

~~~
daurnimator
Isn't DB25 the old standard printer port? Its quite common.

~~~
aardvark179
And has been used as a connector for multichannel audio by several
manufacturers (mostly in recording gear), but with several different pin out
arrangements.

~~~
quickquicker
Yeah, definitely remember wiring up DB-25 breakout cables a few years ago when
I was helping a fledging recording studio wire up their new console into their
Pro Tools system.

~~~
wrigby
Yep - it's pretty common in the pro audio industry to use DB-25 cables for 8
channels of balanced audio (+, -, gnd per channel). They'll break out to 8x
XLR or 8x TRS (1/4" headphone plug) connectors. It's used way more in the
studio world than the live production world, since DB-25 is far from rugged
enough to go on the road.

~~~
sundvor
I recall that my challenge at the time was getting one with the correct
configuration. The first one I got in 2007 was a dud for my setup; it was an 8
channel RCA one which was the only I could find at that time, adapters were
involved (sound card at that time had minijacks) and I hoped I'd just be able
to leave the other two channels unused. That turned out to not be the case.

I tried again in 2008 and scored with a (hopefully) proper 6 channel one from
TheCableCo. It cost me a staggering US$168 shipped to Australia, so my joy was
near endless when it just plugged straight in and worked. After that I
upgraded to the Xonar sound card which took straight RCA inputs.

------
userbinator
_For the moment at least, I have nearly the entire world’s supply of DB-19
connectors, stacked in my living room._

I'm almost willing to bet that there are many more still attached to equipment
buried in rubbish dumps...

------
Zardoz84
Amiga community have a similar problem with the video connector. If I remember
correctly is a db-21 and they take a db-29 and cut it to convert it to db-21.

~~~
Zardoz84
DB-25 cut to DB-23

------
gcb0
if it goes the same as a friend: and now that manufacturer will post the same
product on alibaba and sell it for 1/10 of the price you have to charge and
you will probably keep the 10k units in your living room forever.

~~~
yuhong
I wonder if the market is that large.

------
Niksko
Whoa, he just photoshoped technical drawings of a DB-25? Surely if you're
doing a group buy worth that much money

a) somebody in the group buy has the technical skills to do a proper drawing,
or b) you can spend a tiny amount of money to get proper drawings made.

I mean, it worked out in the end. But it seems like a giant case of Dunning-
Kruger to think "Well I don't know how to make technical drawings, therefore
photoshopping an existing drawing shouldn't present any problems".

~~~
Aloha
I work for a company that manufactures things, its very common to edit paper
drawings (with pen) or photoshop a digital one for which the source file has
been lost, its not that hard to get it right.

~~~
Gibbon1
Just remembered, back in the late 90's went to a board house for some reason
and one of their techs was in the middle of recreating gerbers for a PCB off a
xerox of the top and bottom side of the PCB.

------
Aloha
It goes to show you that with enough effort nearly anything is manufacturable
now.

------
halestock
I wonder if there exists a current/former Apple employee who would have
knowledge of the mechanical drawings that were originally used and/or what
manufacturers made them.

~~~
raverbashing
It's a DB-19 connector. There's nothing secret about its dimensions

Old manufacturer probably trashed the tooling already (maybe it's even out of
business by now)

~~~
chx
> maybe it's even out of business by now

Maybe not. It has been acquired in 1999
[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/06/business/tyco-completes-
ac...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/06/business/tyco-completes-acquisition-
of-amp.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TE_Connectivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TE_Connectivity)
is still there. [http://www.te.com/usa-
en/products/families/amp.html](http://www.te.com/usa-
en/products/families/amp.html) they have 35 135 products under the AMP brand.

My only source for it being AMP:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vintage-
macs/iWdF6fB...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vintage-
macs/iWdF6fBpIhg)

Even if the author got it wrong and it was Amphenol and not AMP that's still
fine, Amphenol exists too :)

