1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the art of electrical connectors, and more particularly to an electrical connector provided with an alignment slot such that the connector and a complementary connector are inhibited from engaging one another if one of them is reversed upside down relative to the other.
2. Description of the Related Art
Chinese Pat. Issue No. 2541966 issued on Mar. 12, 2003 discloses a related electrical connector generally named as Serial ATA Conn. The electrical connector includes a mating portion having first and second parts divided by a partition. Each of the first and second parts includes a cavity being of an L-shape, with each of the cavities including a vertical alignment slot disposed proximate to the partition. The two vertical alignment slots are set such that two mated connectors are inhibited from engaging one another if one of them is reversed upside down relative to the other. Other related connectors including the two vertical alignment slots are found in TW Pat. Issue No. 257195, TW Pat. Issue No. 271277, TW Pat. Issue No. 300879, TW Pat. Issue No. 307889 and TW Pat. Issue No. 551631.
With the trend of miniaturization, the connectors are required to have a greatly-reduced lateral dimension of an insulative body so as to be mounted on a limited space of the printed circuit board. A problem, however, with the above-described electrical connector is that the mating portion is set to have two alignment slots, which really occupies the lateral scale of the insulative body. Therefore, there is a need to provide a new connector to resolve the above-mentioned problem.