Various Types of Connectors for your Computers

While at home or in office we often use them, most of the times we are not aware of simple terms like connectors, ports and cables.

Starting with the most common of the above terms, connectors are devices joining electrical circuits together. So whether you talk about those big black wires joining our stereo with speakers or the ones joining our CPU with the monitor, all are known as connectors.

While some of you might be happy with just this piece of information, other who are curious to know more about the various types of connectors can read on.

Connectors are of various types, ranging from audio & video to male and female.

Audio and video connectors as the name suggest are for audio and video signals respectively, in either digital or analog format.

While a male connector is the one that has pins and is the one that is plugged in. A female connector is commonly known as a jack and has holes where the male gets plugged in. With different combinations according to various needs they are further classified. One such connector which has been used a lot is the DB9 cable.

A DB9 connector is a common connector type widely used in communications and on earlier PCs.DB9 or D-Subminiature connectors have the smallest footprint and as the name suggest have 9 pins or holes, depending upon whether they are male connectors or female connectors respectively. They are analog connectors.

These were the standard connectors and hence many companies were able to design them into their products. DB9 connectors are designed to work with the EIA/TIA 232 serial interface standard, which determined the function of all nine pins as a standard, so that multiple companies could design them into their products. DB9 connectors were commonly used for serial peripheral devices like keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc. Also they are used on DB9 cable assemblies for data connectivity.

The DB9 connectors are mostly used in serial connections for asynchronous transmission of data.DB9 cables are mainly used for peripheral devices like mouse, keyboard etc. If one doesn’t have a DB9 jack, one can easily convert a DB9 plug into a DB25 with the help of DB9-DB25 adapters.

Although these cables have been used a lot at one point of time, the wires inside the DB9 cable are thin and thus fragile. Thus it is not recommended in a movement prone area or where there is vibration because of this risk of the wires breaking off. Today, the DB9 has mostly been replaced by more modern interfaces such as USB, PS/2, Firewire, and others. But just like one can convert DB25 to DB9, it is similarly possible to do vice versa. According to the needs we can use the connector we want without worrying too much.