Negative ion fast atom bombardment (FAB) mass spectra were found to allow the determination of the linkage positions in a series of underivatized linkage-isomeric oligosaccharides. A previous work (Laine et al., 1988) reported that ion patterns of linkage-isomeric trisaccharides could be distinguished by a positive ion. Negative ion FAB collison-activated dissociation (CAD) mass spectrometry (MS) spectra of trisaccharides exhibited better sensitivity than the positive ion mode and provided specific fragmentation patterns according to the linkage positions. Especially, the fragmentations, m/z 205 in F6 and m/z 221 in G6, not occuring in 1-3 or 1-4 linkage. were an indication of 1-6 linkage, by changing collision energies from + 10 eV to +60 eV. The survival ratios of molecular ions in each collision energy set gave support to previous results in which the order of bond stability was 1-6>1-4>1-3 linkage.