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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

This datasheet is dated November 2014.

The datasheet I am working from was downloaded directly from ti.com, recently, and marked as being revised in August 2016. I have verified that is indeed the pdf I have been working from.

I wonder how, precisely, is that less “official”?

Unfortunately this does seem to be a case of BDD being over-confident. Which does happen.
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/max232e.pdf

Thanks for grabbing the link. I was in the process of grabbing the pdf so I could load it in the post directly and so I figure I may as well still do that.

I understand and appreciate what was effectively a “hey, go check your datasheet, something doesn’t look right”, given they appear to have renamed the pins in some revision.

I get this on phone photos too - I've been fixing it by using the phone's photo editing tool, ensuring they are rotated correctly, and slightly cropping the image to force the phone to recompress the image rather than just storing the new rotation as metadata. It seems to work!

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I’m pretty sure I grok approximately what’s what now.

I searched exactly my part number, and landed on the ti page for the 2016 datasheet, which lists exactly my part number in the table inside the sheet.

I’m not going to say I know exactly what you did, because I don’t, and you do, but you can tell me if my swag is in the right ballpark: with my statement that I was pretty sure I got it from the ti site, you did a search for max232 (or otherwise something that wasn’t my full part number), like I just tried, landed on the ti.com page for the November 2014 datasheet (which has various not ‘MAX232E’ variations in it), like I just did, saw that sheet still had the old pin names, and therefore (pretty reasonably) thought I probably had a bad sheet still? (Again, swag, because I’m not you and you certainly know)

If somebody reasonably thinks I’m falling and tries to catch me, when I’m not, that’s no sweat.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I pulled the data sheets for the actual parts I received in my kit to the best of my ability.

I am not going to use pin names from the datasheet for a different part when I am quoting portions of the datasheet for my actual part and those portions actually refer to the new names. Which is what I was doing when I made that post.

In other contexts, sure, if people are used to those names I’m sure I eventually will be, too.

Incidentally, the difference in speed rating will likely be related to the slew rate of the RS-232 line signals. These are deliberately limited by the standard to "reduce crosstalk" in long cables between data and control signals. I'm not sure anyone had heard of twisted-pair transmission lines in those days, or at least they weren't using them for computers or teletypes.

The original slew rate was designed to accommodate just 20 kbaud (hence one of the standard rates being 19200 baud). Obviously a faster slew rate is needed to accommodate the higher speeds that became common for analogue modems (before DSL and cable became the normal method of Internet access - and which could only sensibly be attached through Ethernet). Hence the introduction of line drivers with faster slew rates and speed ratings over ten times the original standard, but otherwise compatible.

Other differences between the original and later standards included the behaviour of the RTS line. Originally it meant "I want to send, please shut up and start listening", to accommodate simplex and half-duplex equipment in a master-slave configuration. Today the meaning is actually inverted, both in direction and interpretation (and officially but not de-facto renamed to RTR) to "I have space to receive, please send what you have" so that it can be connected directly to the opposing CTS line in a peer-to-peer full-duplex configuration. So in this case the date of the documentation is highly relevant!

Well, now I’m diving down a rabbit hole from searches based on the elided.

Thanks!