Talk:PC System Design Guide

Some standards are not listed.
Some of the standards, such as PC98 and PC2001 are not listed here because I was not able to find enough information about them. Please put information about them here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Akinnee (talk • contribs) 17:35, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

adoption of color code
The keyboard and mouse codes were indeed widely accepted by perhiperal vendors as it seems was the monitor code. But in my experiance devices for the paralell port, serial port and USB port rarely followed the code. With audio stuff explicitly designed for PC use followed the code but general purpose audio leads generally didn't (for obvious reasons, one could use such a lead with any of the ports) Plugwash (talk) 03:26, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Why did the standards stop in 2001?
Could somebody in the know add a couple of sentences of what the follow up standards were after 2001? Or if it was completely discontinued (which sounds bizarre) what the reason was? Son of eugene (talk) 07:02, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Alternate version of table
I took the Pantone color references from PC 98 and converted them to hex codes with rgb.to. Some of the results are quite different than the original table, so I didn't save the edit to the article. Here it is:

Some of the colors do look closer in hue but they all appear darker on my screen than the real colors. The table is on Page 60 of PC 99, section 3.18.3. Roches (talk) 12:16, 17 July 2015 (UTC)


 * While reading the PC 99 System Design Guide, Tech Insider version, that supposedly includes corrections and clarifications, I found that the PS/2 colors are different than the ones cited by Roches, and the page number is also different.
 * Here is the resulting table with non-PC99 colors removed.
 * {| class="wikitable"
 * {| class="wikitable"

! colspan="2" | Color !! Function !! Connector on PC ! colspan="5" | Mouse and keyboard ! style="background-color: #00c389;" | ! Green 3395C ! style="background-color: #8b84d7;" | ! Purple 2715C ! style="background-color: #cc8a00;" | ! Gold 131C ! colspan="5" | General input/output ! style="background-color: #25282a;" | ! Black 426C ! style="background-color: #707372;" | ! Grey 424C ! style="background-color: #840b55;" | ! Burgundy 235C ! style="background-color: #007377;" | ! Teal or turquoise 322C ! colspan="5" | Video ! style="background-color: #003594;" | ! Blue 661C ! style="background-color: white;" | ! White ! style="background-color: #ffc72c;" | ! Yellow 123C ! style="background-color: #ffc72c;" | ! Yellow 123C ! colspan="5" | Audio ! style="background-color: #e68699;" | ! Pink 701C ! style="background-color: #6cace4;" | ! Light blue 284C ! style="background-color: #a9c47f;" | ! Lime green 577C ! style="background-color: #eca154;" | ! Orange 157C ! style="background-color: #ad7c59;" | ! Brown 4645C
 * PS/2 mouse / pointing device
 * 6-pin mini-DIN female
 * PS/2 keyboard
 * 6-pin mini-DIN female
 * Game port / MIDI
 * 15-pin D female
 * USB 1
 * USB Type A female
 * IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
 * 6-pin FireWire 400
 * Parallel port
 * 25-pin D female
 * Serial port
 * 9-pin D male
 * Analog monitor
 * 15-pin VGA female
 * Digital monitor
 * DVI female
 * Video out: S-Video
 * 4-pin mini-DIN
 * Video out: Composite video
 * RCA jack
 * Analog microphone audio input (mono or stereo).
 * 3.5 mm TRS
 * Analog line level audio input.
 * 3.5 mm TRS
 * Analog line level audio output.
 * 3.5 mm TRS
 * Analog audio output for the center speaker and Subwoofer
 * 3.5 mm TRS
 * Analog audio output for "right-to-left" speakers.
 * 3.5 mm TRS
 * }
 * The lime and light blue connectors are stated as "line", while the orange and brown are "speaker" outputs, so it would not be much of a stretch to assume that these connectors were originally intended to be separated between line level I/O and amplified/volume adjusted I/O.
 * Another explanation could be that the brown connector is for "surround" speakers, as in speakers intended to reflect sound off of walls instead of being directed directly at the user.
 * Some investigation would be needed to clarify which if any explanation is true.
 * --Frozen dude (talk) 11:14, 7 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Having downloaded almost every available version of PC 99 - including the corrections of the "Addendum" (written in 1999) to the standard (written in 1998) - archived at the Wayback Machine, I can confirm that Frozen dude has the colours essentially correct, as described in several different documents within the "PC Design Guides", in particular as shown in the "PC 99 icons" document there (accessible from the "Site Map" page as the first of four "White papers/ archives". However, the colour "Yellow 123C" only appears once in these documents, for "Video out" (unqualified).  The appearance of the colours in his modified table is a close visual match (on my monitor) to those in the "PC 99 icons" document.
 * Whilst examining the PC 2001 standard documents archived there, I found no update to the PC 99 colours; in fact, the newer standard refers back to the "PC 99 icons" document. So we have no reliable source (here) for:


 * 1) the Yellow and Sky blue for USB 3.0 Superspeed
 * 2) the Red for "High-power USB (more than 500 mA current available)"
 * 3) the Silver for "Analog line level audio output, side stereo (surround speakers)"
 * and therefore should remove them, until such time as we do have references. yoyo (talk) 17:10, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on PC System Design Guide. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20110711032416/http://www.freeopenbook.com/pc-hardware-nutshell-3/pchardnut3-chp-1-sect-1.html to http://www.freeopenbook.com/pc-hardware-nutshell-3/pchardnut3-chp-1-sect-1.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 20:02, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

USB 3 inclusion
USB 3 was introduced much later than 2001, so I question its inclusion in the table here. 24.161.60.195 (talk) 20:04, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

What does "analog audio output for 'right-to-left' speakers" mean?
So brown audio jacks hsa the function "analog audio output for 'right-to-left' speakers" but what does that mean? Does that mean it is setero? Then why does lime green jacks also use a TRS connector and not a TS connector? I also never seen a brown audio jack.

This should probably be clarified. Leonard LMT (talk) 04:37, 11 April 2024 (UTC)