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A Wiki For Cable and Connector Pin-Outs

Posted by kdawson on from the admit-it-you-read-pin-ups dept.

Nicola Asuni writes to let us know about a new resource for hardware hackers: a wiki about pinouts — hardware interfaces of modern and obsolete hardware. "Created with the same MediaWiki software that was developed for the Wikipedia project, AllPinouts.org is a wiki that allows users to get and share information about hardware interfaces, including pinouts of ports, expansion slots, and other connectors of computers and different electronic devices (i.e. cellular phones, GPS, PDA, game consoles, etc.). All text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License and may be distributed or linked accordingly. The 'pinout' (or 'pin-out') of a connector identifies each individual pin, which is critical when creating, repairing or hacking cable assemblies and adapters."

7 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    About time. I've been hoping someone with some bandwidth to spare would be kind enough to collect all of this information in one place for us hackers. We appreciate it! Thanks!

    Captcha: mischief

    1. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They should've just made the pages on wikipedia.

    2. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, sure, then they can spend the rest of their time fighting asshats and idiots who keep trying to make incorrect changes, ask for citations on stuff that doesn't fucking need one and attempts to get the articles deleted as "Not notable". I'm sure that'd be fun.

  2. Re:A couple of points (pins!?) by Techman83 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They might be other sites around, but I've had difficulty in the past finding pinouts, let alone ones that were correct. Most I found tended to be fairly inconsistent in the way things were laid out. If it proves to be as good a resource as wikipedia it's a step in the right direction IMO.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i cat
    Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
  3. Re:A couple of points (pins!?) by adolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real strength of something like this (versus various otherwise-great resources such as pinouts.ru is that once you've accomplished the difficult task of locating, implementing, and verifying a pinout, you can just go ahead and post your results so that the rest of the world doesn't have to duplicate your effort.

    Please don't treat wikis as just a resource to be consumed. Don't assume that someone, somewhere, is tending the light at the end of the tunnel. Contribute what you learn.

    --
    Kid-proof tablet..
  4. Re:Why not put this Wikipedia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I agree, but ... the deletionists would go ballistic and start screaming "its unencyclopedic".

    Apart from that, wikipedia probably would not accept a reverse engineered pinout, on the basis of lack of sources.

  5. Re:/.ed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Creating a bar which folks must jump over before contributing...does not foster creativity

    No, but as John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory shows, and is embodied by places such as 4chan: Anonymous + Audience = Fuckwad. Anonymous edits of a Wiki are a terrible idea, because you will get vandalism. If you can't be bothered to jump the (very low) bar, then it's likely your contribution wouldn't be that great in any case.

    nor does it encourage folks who might otherwise feel constrained by NDA to post a particular pinout.

    They can register an account with untraceable details quite easily.