> That being said, the DE-0 is real, but it can't hurt you.

That depends on several factors, like its current velocity.

Doesn't VGA use DE-15?

You can remove pins from D-sub connectors. There are dedicated tools made for doing so.

Searching google for DE-0 didn't bring any results but now I am curious to see it.

It was an accessory to let you use Amiga joysticks on the PC, from the mid 90s. I had one.

Another possibility is Sun or SGI 13W3 display connector. They were DB25 shaped connectors with 10 regular pins and 3 giant pins for video signals.

I’ve seen this also - I am unsure if it was a cost cutting measure or something else, but I’ve seen more than one connector with many missing pins.

It was pretty common for RS232 (-ish) DB25 connectors not to populate unused pins.

Sure you could do it. You could even put 25 pins in 9 pin housing if you made the pitch smaller.

They just don’t exist, and hopefully never will.

Maybe not as a standard, but I've seen a several companies stuff a crazy number of pins into a DE9 shell. I think one of them was my old GRiD Compass.

Beast of a machine. Heavy as hell, magnesium case, bubble memory, a screen that caused all televisions it was pointed at to lose their signal, and a sticker on the bottom saying it was illegal to use it in a whole list of countries, including Israel.

Heh flashback, I had an ati all in wonder, which was a video card with built in video capture. Now this involves a lot of ports so the model I had used a port breakout dongle for the video capture stuff, and some engineer had the bright idea to run all these pins through a mini-din connector. Think a ps/2 connector with about 10 pins crammed into it. Now ps/2 connectors are sort of stupid in the first place. why a round connector that is keyed to only go in one way? But this 10 pin variant was a nightmare to insert and by about the third time I made a firm resolution to never unplug it again if I could help it.

Footnote: keyed round connectors are not actually that bad, super strong, easy to seal and you can fit a large nut or bayonet clamp to them to make them extremely secure. However, this depends on having a well placed shell/key and mini-din doesn't, it is a bad connector. Not enough shell and key for solid locating so the pins tend to ride on the face while you try and orient it.

I think this was the one I had.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/all-in-wonder-9600.c86...

VGA connectors were a DE-9 shell with 15 pins in them, and were used widely for many years to connect monitors to computers. There are other connectors that crammed 19 pins into a DE-9 shell. 25 might be a bit too much, but 19 is pretty close.

What's the physical contradiction, then? I don't get it.

In a world with 3D printers, everything can potentially exist.

> "DB" already means 25 pins, so well, it's quite hard to both have 25 and 9 pins at the same time.

No, it doesn't. All of the D-Subs are readily available in high density versions:

  DA-15 | DA-26
  DB-25 | DB-44
  DC-37 | DC-62
  DD-50 | DD-78
  DE-9 | DE-15

There are also double density connectors putting 52 pins in a DB housing and whopping 100 connectors in the DD housing.

DB housing can fit 25 pins in 2 rows. But it can also fit 9 really honkin big pins in 1 row, with a custom mold & pins. 3x groups of 3x12-gauge pins for 60A 3-phase delta power connector in a DB sized shell would probably work for a while before you burn your house down.