rts/cts - a tutorial on flow control

[Henry Spencer]

> > when they first started. Their 3101 terminal has a female 25 pin connector,
> > which is wrong. ...
> 
> Why is a female connector on a DTE terminal port wrong???
> As far as ASYNC-only devices go, a male DTE connector is quite rare.

The original rule, I believe, was that DCEs were female, and a DTE was
supposed to *come with a cable* with a male end to plug into the DCE.
This obviously made the sex of the connector on the DTE itself irrelevant.
So much for the old days...  My observations around our shop suggest
that the current de-facto standard is that computers (i.e. the connector
panels on their terminal muxes) are male and everything else is female.
(Make of this what you will...)
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry