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I have this connector that connects 2 50 pin cables together. The opposite side is also male. The pin spacing is 0.1". From my research it appears to be a IDC50 SCSI connector, but I have been unable to locate any types of these connectors or cables that are male to male. If I am correct, what are some additional search terms that I could use? I already tried to use the term coupler or male to male, but neither returned any results.

enter image description here

Eric Johnson
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    that is not a scsi connector, that has a D shell. it is a "gender bender" for a ribbon cable connector – jsotola Dec 16 '17 at 01:17
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    Custom Shrouded Terminal Strip? Try asking Samtec.com they are great. – Passerby Dec 16 '17 at 01:19
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    What's your goal in identifying it? Do you want to buy one? You could easily make one by soldering together two through hole headers, or surface mounting through hole headers onto the edge of a piece of appropriate thickness PCB with straight through tracks. @jsotola this very well could be SCSI, for *internal* ribbon cable connections. – Chris Stratton Dec 16 '17 at 01:21
  • In a perfect world I would want to buy these with the same spacing in between. I like the idea about soldering 2 through hole connectors together but would prefer an off the shelf solution. – Eric Johnson Dec 16 '17 at 02:12
  • Samtec looks promising. – Eric Johnson Dec 16 '17 at 02:22
  • the pins may not be straight through. there may be a crossover inside the shell – jsotola Dec 16 '17 at 05:14
  • @jsotola Where? You can literally see both sides of the pin as it passes through the plastic. While I suppose it's _possible_ there's some microcircuitry inside the plastic that swaps pins, it seems pretty unlikely that anyone would go to that much trouble to hide the crossover. –  Dec 16 '17 at 05:17
  • @duskwuff, i was only guessing. the picture is only one view. if it is a gender-changer then the pins would have to be switched between odd and even sides. – jsotola Dec 16 '17 at 11:31

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That's a made-up adapter, that swaps the even and odd wires of a 50-position ribbon cable. Note that the one side's polarizing notch is on the lower pins, and the other side-s polarizing nub is adjacent to the upper pins. That's a wiring no-no, it won't connect pin 1 to pin 1.

A real ribbon cable coupler would have latches to secure the cables, and provision for connecting to a chassis, not just bare conductors.

Probably, the less-visible side just has the ends of wire-wrap pins poking through a mismatched plastic shell part.

Couplers for two-row SCSI feedthrough (male/female) only used back-to-back connectors in conjunction with a U-shaped flexible wiring board (and usually contained terminator resistors). The wiring board did the top/bottom swap so pin 1 side A DID connect to pin 1 side B.

Whit3rd
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  • Nope.. I have definitely seen those, used them even, though decades ago. No idea what they were called though. – Trevor_G Dec 16 '17 at 13:44
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I've never managed to find a source of back to back IDC connectors to extend IDC cables so I just made some small PCBs with two male connectors to solve this problem.

Captain Barnacles
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