[rescue] Cable Balls

[Ron Wickersham]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014, r.stricklin wrote:

> On Sep 18, 2014, at 8:47 AM, Barry Callahan wrote:
>
>> You mean 50-pin Centronics SCSI cables?
>> Or 36-pin Centronics Printer cables?
>
> There's no such thing as "Centronics SCSI". A parallel port on a Centronics
> printer has 36 positions. 50 positions makes it some other kind of parallel
> port.
>
> The connector is an Amphenol "Blue Ribbon".
>
>> And yes, I'm being a pedant.
>
> Not a very good one.

well, the "Blue Ribbon" series connectors are physically much, much larger
than the "Centronics" or SCSI connectors (the SCSI-sized connectors are
(were) also used in telephony for terminating 25-pair cables for the
key system (multi-line) telephones which used to be popular in businesses.
the Amphenol designation for the smaller connectors is iirc mini-blue
ribbon.   the original blue ribbon connectors were popular in industrial
equipment (i still have a Slo-Syn numerical control cabinet in use that uses
the blue-ribbon connectors) and another place people may have encountered
the blue-ribbon connectors was the plug-in preamps and time-base modules
in vacuum-tube Tektronix scopes.

-ron