Pinouts >  Network hardware interfaces
15 pin D-SUB female connector layout
15 pin D-SUB female connector
An Attachment Unit Interface (AUI) is a 15 pin connection that provides a path between a node?s Ethernet interface and the Medium Attachment Unit (MAU), sometimes known as a transceiver. It is the part of the IEEE Ethernet standard located between the MAC, and the MAU.

An AUI connector is a 15-pin D-connector. It has a sliding clip in place of the thumbscrews normally found on a D-connector to hold two connectors together. This clip permits the MAU and MAC to be directly attached to one another even when their size and shape would preclude the use of thumbscrews.

AUI connectors became rarer from the early 1990s. This was because it became more common for computers and hubs to incorporate the MAU, particularly as the 10baseT standard became more common and use of 10BASE-5 (thicknet) and 10BASE-2 (thinnet) declined. The electrical AUI connection was still present inside the equipment. By the mid-1990s AUI had all but disappeared as fast ethernet, which has no direct equivalent of AUI, became more common. Gigabit ethernet and 10 gigabit ethernet have respectively the GBIC and XAUI standards which are equivalent to AUI.

Pin Description
1 control in circuit shield
2 control in circuit A
3 data out circuit A
4 data in circuit shield
5 data in circuit A
6 voltage common
7 N/C
8 control out circuit shield
9 control in circuit B
10 data out circuit B
11 data out circuit shield
12 data in circuit B
13 voltage plus
14 voltage shield
15 N/C

An AUI cable may be up to 50 metres long, although frequently the cable is omitted altogether and the MAU and MAC are directly attached to one another.

A modified form using a smaller connector called the AAUI was used on Apple Macintosh computers in the early 1990s.

15 pin D-SUB male connector layout
15 pin D-SUB male connector
According to 2 reports in our database (2 positive and 0 negative) the AUI connector pinout should be correct.

Is this pinout
Source(s) of this and additional information: Tommy"s pinout Collection by Tommy Johnson, from Hardware Book and wikipedia
Copyright © 2000-2023 by pinouts.ru team, except user uploaded images.
No portion of this webpage may be reproduced in any form without visible link to pinouts.ru .
Efforts have been made to ensure this page is correct, but it is the responsibility of the user to verify the data is correct for their application.