What is the difference between an RS-232 cable and a DB9 one?

This might be a stupid question, but i cannot seem to find an answer for it....I have a DB9 female to female cable for my empeg (although for the life of me, i can't find it at the moment) and need an RS-232 cable to do a firmware update for my receiver. Are they different? i can't seem to find a straight answer using Google....

That's sort-of because you're not asking a straight question. RS-232 is a signalling standard, and DB9 is a connector standard. Most cables that are intended to carry RS-232 signals, have DB9 connectors -- but some RS-232 cables have different connectors, and some cables for other signals have DB9 connectors.

The Empeg cable is suitable for RS-232 (and has DB9 connectors). The only gotcha is that there are two possible ways of wiring up such a cable: "null-modem" and "straight through" (though "straight through" are usually female-to-male). The Empeg one is "null-modem". If your Empeg cable fits the connectors for your firmware upgrade, it'll probably do the job.

Peter

Perhaps he's referring to a DB25 rather than RS-232?

More than you ever wanted to know about serial cables.