DB9 Male breakout (BOB-29195) incorrect

Other
1

I purchased a couple of sparkfun DB9 breakout boards to build an RS-232 sniffer: one with a male DB9, the other with a female DB9. P/Ns are BOB-29195 (male) and BOB-29196 (female). These boards route the pins from the DB9 connector to a nice row of 0.1 spaced headers connectors, labeled 1-9.

On the female version, the DB9 pins are routed as expected: DB9 pin 1 goes to header 1, 2 goes to 2, etc. But on the male version, the routing is mirrored: DB9 pin 1 goes to header 5, 2 goes to 4, etc. Here is the full pinout:

DB9     Header
--------------
1       5
2       4
3       3
4       2
5       1
6       9
7       8
8       7
9       6

Has anyone else seen this? Is this by design, or is it a mistake? If it were by design, I would expect the female breakout to have the same pinout-to-header (right?)

2

While that seems like a safe assumption they are in fact different by design
Male
Female
I can’t offer much as to why but the schematics show how each one is routed

3

The schematic for the female board is correct, however, the schematic for the male board is not correct. The pinout (measured using multimeter) from the header to the DB9 is per my original post. The schematic does show what I would expect.

I’m not sure if it matters but I ordered my breakout boards from DigiKey (not directly from SparkFun), so it is possible I received an old rev or something.

4

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Since both M&F mount the same way and have identical routing I believe you are correct! Thank you for pointing this out, we’ll get to work on a new revision

5

Follow-up:

If the board’s silkscreen says v10 it is a defective unit (ones that says “v11” are fine!); if it/they were purchased from us head over to Return Policy - SparkFun Electronics (contact vendor if purchased elsewhere) and we’ll get ya squared away with replacements :slight_smile:

6

Thank you for the follow-up. I understand the issue now…I definitely have v10 :frowning: . For my application I was able to wire things up correctly so no big deal. I mostly just wanted folks to be aware of the issue, and happy to see the board was rev’d. I’ll try to send a note to DigiKey so they know they have a bad lot.