Centronix gender?

correct.

yes

... and the connector is Amphenol micro-ribbon type (Centronix is a defunct printer manufacturer that used one of the variants).

Centronics. Centronics was a manufacturer of mainframe printers who decided to use a standardized interface on their products, and it spread across the industry over time. The original connectors were AMP Blue Ribbon series 36 contact. Now part of TE Connectivity.

We had quite a party trying to fix a centronics printer that was part of a minicomputer system. Late 70's design. Must of taken 3-4 rotating shifts of work. Don't remember the details, but a replacement was not at hand.

Greg

Thanks to all

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

It's actually a pretty nice connector. It's hard to break and reliable enough. Anybody miss cutting apart printer cables to run though walls and then having to resolder the DB25 side back on?

Those printers were very expensive, so not having a spare wasn't a common occurrence. I hated the GE band printers, but I thought the Data Products drum printers were interesting. Just don't print all 132 columns of the same character too often, or they would walk across the floor. :)

I never soldered them. I used a crimper to install pins for a new DB25. :)

That reminds me of those white and red pin extractor tools. I just saw one pop up not too long ago.

I have several. They used to throw them in with a box of pins. Molex brand I think. I remember when we built our own phone system we had to find a volunteer with a 25 pair crimper.

I had a Printronix P300 or P600 at home for a while. It had 4 or 5 large boards to make up the logic/interface and store the character ROMs. The giant 1/3rd HP sized induction motor inside of it was the best part.

The other rediculous beast was a Florida Data dot matrix printer. It had the fastest carriage I've ever seen in any printer. The thing would rock any printer stand back and forth with ease.

Back in the days when plastic was just used for insulation & trim parts. :)

I've used thin brass tubing when the right extractor wasn't available. :)

It's always the last pin or shell that just won't come out or has the locking splays break off during the battle to be removed.

I hate molex connectors for this reason. The phase of the moon will make a the pins and shells go out of aligmment and then somebody force it, leaving it broken for the next use. I'm surprised there isn't some $450 tool to pull the pins or shells back into the connector housing.

I've seen a lot of fake Molex connectors in PCs. Their logo was missing on the shell, and the contacts.