Colour-Coded Connector Confusion
Ever wondered why all of your PC's connectors are weird colours, and who gets to decide what colour is what?
The colours are defined by the PC99 standard (careful, it's 1.5MB of PDF). The standard uses Pantone rather than RGB, so I've converted them for you.
| Connector | Colour name | Pantone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analog VGA | Blue | 661C | |
| Audio line in | Light blue | 284C | |
| Audio line out | Lime | 577C | |
| Digital monitor/flat panel | White | ||
| IEE 1394 | Grey | 424C | |
| Microphone | Pink | 701C | |
| MIDI/Game | Gold | 131C | |
| Parallel | Burgundy | 235C | |
| PS/2-compatible keyboard | Purple | 2715C | |
| PS2-compatible mouse | Green | 3395C | |
| Serial | Teal or Turquoise | 322C | |
| Speaker out/subwoofer | Orange | 157C | |
| Right-to-left speaker | Brown | 4645C | |
| USB | Black | 426C | |
| Video out | Yellow | 123C | |
| SCSI, network, telephone, modem, and so on | None |
The standard is not complusory and PC manufacuters may choose to use it or ignore it. How does your computer score? Start with 10 points, and subtract one for each incorrectly-coloured connector or plug.
© LEV
