[HN Gopher] USB inventor explains why the connector was not desi... ___________________________________________________________________ USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019) Author : thunderbong Score : 113 points Date : 2023-10-09 09:40 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com) | theogravity wrote: | > Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated | twice as many wires and twice as many circuits | | Is this still true with USB-C? | eep_social wrote: | From other comments it sounds like no. Instead, every port must | detect the orientation and switch to using the correct lines in | software. IIUC, each cable also needs a small IC to assist with | this. | Findecanor wrote: | Reversibility for USB 2.0 data signals is mechanical: There are | data pins on both sides and only one set of pins get connected. | The socket side connects both sets. | | There is only one more wire in a USB-C 2.0 cable: it is used to | signal orientation and if an end is a power source, sink or a | headphone adaptor. | | USB-3 signals are more complicated though. There can be up to | two bidirectional high-speed channels. The aforementioned | sensing pin is used to figure out if those channels need to be | swapped or not. | donatj wrote: | Hear me out. The original USB only had 4 pins. I always thought a | round ringed TRS style plug like headphones use would have been | great. No way to orient it incorrectly. | metaphor wrote: | > _I always thought a round ringed TRS style plug like | headphones use would have been great. No way to orient it | incorrectly._ | | Now consider the forward-looking bandwidth implications with | that class of physical interconnect. | adolph wrote: | The iPod shuffle did this to decrease the connector size and | count. | oniony wrote: | I think the problem these connectors have is that each ring has | to slide over the other contacts to get to its correct | location. | | USB Type-A has longer contacts for pins 1 and 4, the power | pins, so they contact first and remain contacted before the | data pins make contact. You can see that in this picture | https://www.electroschematics.com/usb-how-things-work/. | tommiegannert wrote: | Many of the TRS connectors have a built-in switch to | (originally) disconnect the internal speaker. | | It would probably have been easy to extend that concept to | isolate all contacts until the tip hits the bottom. | lesuorac wrote: | I know everybody is still on the high from USB-C but I'm still | going to go on the record it will be one of the biggest disasters | in cable history. | | 1) There's going to be video-only cables; low-voltage only | cables; etc and this time everything is usb-c so you can | literally only tell which ables work by testing all of the dozen | cables instead of the 1-2 USB-As you have. | | 2) The connector is symmetrical but the pins aren't. You can see | a wiring scheme of how symmetry is handled [1]; literally | manufactures are going to cheap out and not do that and you have | 1-way USB-C cables without any kind of orientation markers. | | An obviously key'd connector like firewire / ethernet would've | solved all of USB-A's flip it thrice problems. And this could've | been allowed in a backwards compatible where old USB-A cables | were basically a skeleton key and the new USB-A cables had a ward | that blocked them from fitting incorrectly. | | [1]: | https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/125011/how-d... | slikrick wrote: | USBC has been out for over a decade, have you ever run into 2) | Izkata wrote: | Up until this year I've had exactly 3 USB-C cables: Nintendo | Switch, which is always plugged into its dock; laptop | charger, also always plugged in at my desk; and phone | charger. No real room for the mistakes they're describing. | lesuorac wrote: | Nintendo Switch is non-compliant [1] so you've already seen | (2) it just hasn't been a big enough problem to be visible | to you. I suspect a big reason for that is the Switch is a | wall<->USB-C charger so you don't try to connect it between | many USB-C devices. | | [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/87vmu | d/the_... | Izkata wrote: | I was responding to the "out for over a decade" part; how | long they've been available doesn't mean much if they | haven't been very common for consumer electronics for | that long. Up until this year I've had only 1 such cable, | my phone charger, that could get mixed up in any way... | and that one couldn't be mixed up because I didn't have a | second unused cable to mix it up with. | Ajedi32 wrote: | I've been using USB-C on basically every consumer | electronics device I've used over nearly the past decade. | Over the years I have accumulated: | | 1. A laptop with a USB-C power/data/DisplayPort port | | 2. A phone with a USB-C power/data port | | 3. Multiple USB power banks which use a single USB-C port | for both charging and discharging | | 4. A smartwatch with a dock that uses USB-C | | 5. Multiple flashlights with USB-C charging | | 6. Multiple bluetooth speakers with USB-C charging | | 7. A pair of earbuds with a case that uses USB-C charging | | 8. Dozens of various USB-C cables and power bricks, some | of which came included with the products above | | So far I've had zero issues with any of them. Sure, not | all cables support full charging speeds/data rates, but | generally speaking I can just plug things in and expect | them to work in some fashion. | | Maybe to iPhone users USB-C feels like a new thing? To | everyone else it's been a mature ecosystem for a long | time now, which is why a lot of the comments in this | thread commenting about it as if it's a brand new, | unproven technology seem very strange to me. | | Edit: Just remembered I also have an air duster and an | electric toothbrush that use USB-C. Those didn't | immediately occur to me because I don't have to charge | them often. There might be more I'm forgetting... | Izkata wrote: | I'm an Android user, and for your points 5, 6, 7, and 8 | all of mine are USB-A to Micro USB (except for a | flashlight bought this year which came with a USB-A to | USB-C cable, and I use wraparound bluetooth headphones | instead of earbuds and get the feeling those designs are | just extremely rarely updated). | | No displayport or smartwatch here, and my power banks all | came with A-to-micro or A-to-C cables (mostly the former) | - there's a convention in that ecosystem that power flows | from the A connector to the other end. | Ajedi32 wrote: | Yes, I have seen some products still using micro-B. I've | generally just avoided them because I don't want to have | to carry another type of cable, so maybe that's colored | my perception a bit of how widespread USB-C usage is. | | For the products you've purchased that came with an | A-to-C cable, have you tried using them with a plain | C-to-C cable? In my experience usually that will "just | work". (Maybe there are some power banks out there that | don't support outputting power through their USB-C port. | If those exist I've managed to avoid them so far.) | Izkata wrote: | Just tried plugging my phone into one of those power | banks like that: The phone recognized it was plugged into | USB, but didn't start charging. The light on the power | bank did turn on though, so I redid it with a USB power | meter: The power bank was sucking power from my phone at | about 3.4 watts. | cesarb wrote: | > The power bank was sucking power from my phone at about | 3.4 watts. | | At least on Android, there's an option to change the | power direction (IIRC, it's in the same place where you | choose the data connection mode). I have to use that | option to switch the direction whenever I use the USB-C | cable to charge my phone from my laptop, otherwise it | tries to charge the laptop from the phone. | lxgr wrote: | > there's a convention in that ecosystem that power flows | from the A connector to the other end | | That's not just a convention, it's a vital part of the | specification :) | | USB-C devices go to significant lengths to make it hard | for users to violate that invariant using an unsafe | combination of otherwise safe adapters - that's why there | is no USB-C-to-A adapter, for example (because that would | let you build an A-to-A cable, and USB-A hosts are not | required to detect possible loops/short circuits; USB-C | hosts are). | Izkata wrote: | I mean, I feel like they prefer to keep using A-to-C or | A-to-Micro because of power flow instead of packaging | C-to-C (and from some quick Amazon searches, C output | still looks rare, the majority of what I'm seeing is C | input and A output on the power bank itself). | fragmede wrote: | Those C input ports are usually also output ports. | lxgr wrote: | _Almost_ always, as I 've noticed only after grabbing a | friend's power bank and a C-to-lightning cable for a day | trip... | | I believe an USB-C device port is easier to implement | than a host/power supply port, since the host is only | allowed to supply Vbus after ensuring that it's connected | to a device (by actively probing the resistor connected | to the CC pins etc.), whereas a device port only needs to | present that resistor. After all, even a passive C-to- | micro-B cable can do that. | lxgr wrote: | The comment you're referencing is claiming that the | Switch is non-compliant at the power delivery protocol | level. | | Assuming that that's true, this has nothing to do with | being wired incorrectly, nor is it an implementation | mistake that's facilitated by the design of the USB-C | plug being reversible. It could literally happen with | USB-PD over USB-A/B. | alexwasserman wrote: | My keyboard came with a usb A to usb C cable which is | proprietary in some way. A regular cable doesn't work for it. | jmbwell wrote: | 3) The most fragile part (the wafer in the center of the | receptacle) is on the expensive-to-repair device, while the | least fragile part is on the cheap-to-replace cable. HDMI makes | this same mistake. With USB-A, at least the plastic part on the | device is relatively robust, and with Lightning, both plug and | socket were rather robust (albeit prone to debris incursion). | With older pin-type connectors like VGA and DVI, the fragile | pins are completely on the replaceable cable. | yreg wrote: | I was told this exact opposite argument about Lightning being | worse than USB-C. The line of reasoning was that the springy | part breaks and in USB-C the springy bit is in the cable, | while in Lightning the pins are sturdy. | imtringued wrote: | My mother bent the "least fragile part" on at least a dozen | wires meanwhile the port itself kept working. | petee wrote: | Im not sure this is true, the part in the cable is just tiny | pins and far more vulnerable than the wafer. For years now | I've dug woodchips and other junk out of my phones usb-c | socket with paperclips and never came close to damage. It | seems sufficiently recessed to prevent all but the most | aggressive attack. | | Edit: in fact, trying now it seems to be perfectly recessed | that I can't even push on it from an angle with the | connector, it has to go straight in a bit before it even | touches, on any of my devices | jmbwell wrote: | I mean, I'm referring to things I've had to deal with. | Failure isn't obvious until the user complains of random | disconnects, and then you find that although everything | looks fine from the outside, you can wiggle the wafer | inside like a loose tooth. The plastic of the wafer has | cracked and is being held in place only by the metal in the | contacts. | | I'll grant that it's robust in that it continues to work | more than I'd expect, for example continuing to charge the | laptop but not reliable for the external display. And once | connected, sure it's secure. | | I suspect it's not the cable mating that causes the | failure, but other foreign objects... keys in the bag or | something... that manage to dislodge it. And some laptops | have more play in the connector than others, which I think | allows the connector on the cable end to hit the wafer with | an angle of attack sufficient to dislodge it. Some of my | users handle heavy bulk materials all day and are anything | but gentle with computers. | | In any case, I'm sure the designers considered this, and | far be it from me to second-guess their compromises. It is | what it is. But if the port has failure modes, this is one | of them. | lxgr wrote: | It's almost as if the designers have considered this | potential failure mode for devices that often get dropped | even while plugged into a charger :) | | I can emphasize with many of the gripes people have with | USB-C cables and supported modes being confusing, but the | port is really, really well thought out: Make the cable the | part that fails more easily [1]; make it so that the plug | only minimally acts as a lever while partially or fully | plugged in; cover the pins on the plug (because otherwise | people will inevitably touch them, and these cables can | carry up to 48 V of voltage). | | [1] That part has actually worked well for everything but | my Yubikey :( USB-A and an adapter it is for the next one. | dist-epoch wrote: | It was a specific design goal of USB-C to put the fragile | part on the cable, not on the device. | | For people who are not versed in mechanical connector design | it might look like the fragile part is that center wafer. | | USB-A is massive compared to USB-C, that's why it's so | robust, thick plastic, thick metal, wide connector lanes. | | If USB-C is fragile, is just because it's so small, you can | easily break it with not so much pressure. | bandrami wrote: | The worst connector for that problem is those ----ing antenna | leads your laptop has for an M2 wifi card. | CarVac wrote: | Those connectors are good for one connection and no | disconnections. | nyanpasu64 wrote: | I broke the ring on a M.2 Wi-Fi card, but installed the | cable onto it anyway. I think the part I bent off will | probably rip off and get stuck in the cable the next time I | take the connector off the card. Here's hoping I'll never | have to do that... | jdfellow wrote: | I believe those are MCX. My Shure SE215 IEMs (earphones) | use the same connector. | Hackbraten wrote: | > The most fragile part (the wafer in the center of the | receptacle) is on the expensive-to-repair device, while the | least fragile part is on the cheap-to-replace cable. | | Why do you think that the wafer is the most fragile part? | | One might argue that the latch mechanism would be the part | most exposed to wear and tear due to mechanical stress | incurred by plugging and removing. Those side latches are | located in the plug, not in the receptacle. | | See also figure 3-14 in the USB-C spec [1]. | | [1]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20S | pec%... | jmbwell wrote: | Doesn't seem like one would preclude the other. | | I guess I'll have to take a video next time I see it. | kuratkull wrote: | Personally my last two phones have had this. It starts | slowly - the cables occasionally don't work, then some | cables won't work at all, then no cables work without 2 | minutes of gentle manipulation, eventually it becomes | almost impossible to charge. You waste so much time on this | before it gets so bad that you can't live another day with | the phone. | | I haven't seen a USB-C cable that has wore out. | Findecanor wrote: | USB-C plugs are supposed to have 2.0 data pins only on one | side. It is only the sockets that should have them on both | sides. The other data pins are negotiated. | | When USB-C was brand new, I got a flawed breakout board where | only the socket's data pins on one side were connected. I did | not notice it until it was soldered together and the device got | power but no connection when the cable was connected in one | orientation. But then I had already built a metal case to fit | that breakout board perfectly, so I just left it in. | lloeki wrote: | > There's going to be video-only cables | | From my understanding I think that is not technically possible | because to pass video they need the data lines but maybe I'm | mistaken? | | IIUC again even if it did work I think these would be non- | compliant. People hell-bent on doing non-compliant things would | do it irrespective of any design. | | > low-voltage only cables | | That's a given due to physical constraints (length, diameter: | would you accept that all cables are 0.8m / thick and | unbendable). It was so with USB-A too, as well as non-standard | power delivery, at the risk of setting things on fire or | destroying devices. USB-PD makes it so that you basically can't | fry anything or melt a cable, it falls back to the best | possible through negotiation. But then again, people hell-bent | on doing non-compliant things would do it irrespective of any | design. | | > literally manufactures are going to cheap out and not do that | and you have 1-way USB-C cables without any kind of orientation | markers. | | Non-compliant for sure. Ah, yes, people hell-bent on doing non- | compliant things would do it irrespective of any design. | | At least with USB-C+USB-4+USB-PD we get a fighting chance. | | > An obviously key'd connector like firewire / ethernet | would've solved all of USB-A's flip it thrice problems | | Rumour has it that USB-B which is keyed, has five positions due | to squareness. FireWire and Ethernet have the same state | superpositions as USB-A. Hell I've seen people shove an | Ethernet cable the wrong way in _and have it fit_ (breaking the | infamous clip in the process). USB-C? I lay it basically flat | and clip it in, barely looking at the connector and not even | taking a glance at the port. Worst case it needs a few degrees | rotation. | dharmab wrote: | > From my understanding I think that is not technically | possible because to pass video they need the data lines but | maybe I'm mistaken? | | Counterexample: The Meta Quest link cables use a USB-C style | connector but internally are very different from a regular | cable. | slikrick wrote: | and that can happen with literally every cable, people have | abused USB-A and RJ45 for many decades... | usrusr wrote: | Not every cable. Not if you make the connector a closed | standard that can't be used without ruinous licencing | fees and keep a squad of patent attorneys on retainer. | Thankfully USB is not one of those. | lloeki wrote: | > make the connector a closed standard that can't be used | without ruinous licencing fees and keep a squad of patent | attorneys on retainer | | Time has shown that doesn't seem to prevent cheap - and | potentially dangerous - knockoffs from areas outside | possible litigation. | lloeki wrote: | So, not actually USB compliant? (save for the connector) | | One can't blame non-compliant cables on USB-C as it could | happen with any other connector. | MikusR wrote: | They are regular (fiber optic) USB-C cables. | quietbritishjim wrote: | I can certainly see (1) happening, especially with cables that | come with the device they are expected to plug into. It already | widely happens with fallback to slower bit rate or lower power | charging. | | But (2) seems very unlikely. Most consumers just won't even | consider that it has an orientation, and after it fails a few | times chuck it in the bin or send it back. If it comes with a | device (i.e. printer or monitor comes with a non-reversible | cable) they're likely to send the whole device back. That would | be a ridiculous false economy for the manufacturer. | usrusr wrote: | (1) as in Video only, as in they won't work to top up the | battery in random Bluetooth gadgets and the like? Amongst | compliant cables, you might occasionally find some that are | rated 40 Gbps but do not identify as high voltage capable. | But I suspect that once manufacturers stomach the wire cost | of those fat 40+ cables (display!), skimping out on PD | capability just won't make enough of a difference to abandon | efficiencies of scale. PD cables that are no/low bandwidth? | Sure, those will be with us forever. But "display only" will | be a rarity. | quietbritishjim wrote: | I didn't take it that literally. | usrusr wrote: | What would be the alternative? An entirely new physical | connector every time manufacturers feel the desire to | make this year's model slightly more capable than last | year's? Some form of "physical semver" where "not all new | features are possible with all old cables" mandates a new | plug shape? | | If we were still limited to domain specific connectors | (one for storage, one for networking, one for audio, one | for video, one for each type of user input) we'd still | run into the same (non)issues: unless every revision of, | say, displayport came with it's own unique connector, | without digging a little deeper (checking some | version/capability symbols) you don't know wether a given | cable supports the latest feature set or not. The | universal in USB is not the problem. | gpderetta wrote: | I had a USB-C Xiaomi phone that at some point only allowed | being plugged in in one orientation. I guess one side failed, | but then again, that wasn't the only failing of that phone, | nor even close to the most annoying. | lesuorac wrote: | That might not have been a symmetry problem per-say. | | It could be that the phone correct determined the | orientation but a pin was dirty/broken so it couldn't be | used. When flipping the cable around the pin in use changes | to one that isn't dirty/broken and so it works fine. USB-C | may have a ton of pins but that doesn't mean all of them | are needed to charge so flipping it can move a broken pin | into the unused pins. | gpderetta wrote: | oh, yes, very likely it was a broken or dirty pin (that's | what I mean with "failed"). I wouldn't be surprised if it | was somehow a software problem as well (apparently for | simplicity) some cheap USB-C port setups are wired as two | ports. | tzs wrote: | I wish there was a requirement that USB C cables must have sort | of ID chip that can be easily read that tells what the cable | supports, so that we could have simple testers that you can | plug a cable into and be told what speed and power it supports. | ianburrell wrote: | Except for power, that is all determinable from the cable | itself. USB-C cable supports power and USB2 data. Resistor | determines the power, either legacy USB, 1.5A or 3A. Every | USB-C cables support that. If there are USB3 pins connected, | then it supports USB3 data and alternate mode. I think USB3 | has negotiation protocol to figure out the data rate. There | is also negotiation about power delivery on USB-C specific | pins. | tomjakubowski wrote: | If you have two USB-C ports on one computer which both | support "everything", could you write a cable tester in | software? | Ajedi32 wrote: | That exists. It's called an e-marker and you can buy testers | for about $60 that will read it for you. If a cable doesn't | have one of those markers then odds are it can't handle over | 5 amps or USB 2.0 speeds. | | It is kind of annoying that that functionality isn't built | into phones and PCs though. There was some talk about | building support into the Linux kernel[1] but it doesn't seem | like that went anywhere. | | [1]: https://people.kernel.org/bleung/now-how-many-usb-c-to- | usb-c... | lxgr wrote: | > There's going to be video-only cables | | There is no such thing for USB-C. | | > low-voltage only cables | | As far as I know, only the amperage is negotiated; every | compliant cable needs to support at least 20 V. | | And even then, the minimum is also 3 A, which allows for 60 W | to be carried on even the cheapest cables - enough for many use | cases. I actually like having lighter and more flexible cables | for most of my devices. | | > The connector is symmetrical but the pins aren't. You can see | a wiring scheme of how symmetry is handled [1]; literally | manufactures are going to cheap out and not do that and you | have 1-way USB-C cables without any kind of orientation | markers. | | With all the many USB-C headaches I've heard of (and only very | rarely encountered myself), I've never seen that happen. | | The most common problem must be using a USB 2 only cable for a | use case that requires USB 3 speeds and/or video. | yreg wrote: | HDMI flashbacks... | | The solution is - I guess - to buy plenty of 'good' | multipurpose cables and throw anything that doesn't work as | expected away. | omnibrain wrote: | This could have been as well been a prediction 8 years ago, | because in the mean time all of this happened. | | regarding 1) look at this post from 2019: | https://people.kernel.org/bleung/now-how-many-usb-c-to-usb-c... | I imagine it only got worse in the mean time. | | regarding 2) I have seen various posts in the past of devices | that only work if the cables are connected in a specific | orientation. Technical background is discussed here: | https://acroname.com/blog/why-usb-c-connections-sometimes-do... | umanwizard wrote: | Yes and even worse, now EU bureaucrats have mandated that Apple | give up their resistance and support this inferior connector. | ZekeSulastin wrote: | Apple is one of the companies that helped design USB-C and | have been using it for everything except iPhones and AirPods | for years now. | addicted wrote: | Maybe it's news to iPhone people (and I say this as someone | whose only used iPhones since he got a smartphone over a decade | ago other than for 6 months where I used a Windows phone and 3 | months of an Android phone), USB-C wasn't invented with the | iPhone 15. | | It's been around a long time and most people have managed just | fine, and absolutely loved the common cable. And everyone hated | the iPhone user because you had to pull out a new cable to | charge it. | scarface_74 wrote: | Grab a random USB C cable. Now answer a few questions. | | 1. What speed does the cable support? | | 2. How much data does the cable support? | | 3. Can it support video over USB-C? | hedora wrote: | 4. Is it capable of charging this device? | | 5. Is it capable of charging devices when plugged into this | charger? | | 6. If it can charge this combination of things, what | wattage can it charge at? | bigstrat2003 wrote: | > There's going to be video-only cables; low-voltage only | cables; etc and this time everything is usb-c so you can | literally only tell which ables work by testing all of the | dozen cables instead of the 1-2 USB-As you have. | | Whether or not this happens, it will have nothing to do with | USB-C's merits as a connector. You could (theoretically) have | the same mess happen with USB-A connectors as well. | Ajedi32 wrote: | I had to do a double take after reading this comment to make | sure I wasn't reading an old thread from 2014 or something. | | USB-C has been out for years now and neither of these | predictions have come to pass. Your comment aged poorly before | you even finished writing it. | | USB-C isn't without its problems, but neither of those are one | of them. | ianferrel wrote: | I have USB-C cables that look the same, but some of them | carry video and some don't. | | I have USB-C charging devices that will charge off of some | cables, but not off the one that will charge my laptop. I now | have a box of weird crappy cheap USB-C cables with taped-on | notes that say which toys they'll charge. | | I never had this problem with previous USBs. If the cable fit | in the port, it would charge and transfer data. Sometimes you | needed a different cable or port or something to go _faster_ | , but they all basically worked. | smolder wrote: | I don't own any Apple devices myself and don't even have a | MBP through work anymore, but I do have a couple of Apple | USB-C cables and a spare laptop charger, still. They | conveniently seem to work with every kind of device for any | use. Data, video, fast charging. | | However, I do have one other cable that won't do data. I | think it came with a cheap charger I bought while | travelling. I would certainly like it if there was a label | saying _charge only_ or something to that effect, on the | incomplete cable. | alanbernstein wrote: | I own a usb-c male to usb-c female extension cable that I | connect to a yubikey. The yubikey only works in one | orientation. I don't have any other bits to test hypotheses | with, but I believe the cable was made with the symmetry | problem described above. | mlyle wrote: | Usb-c to usb-c extensions are currently explicitly | prohibited by standard, both because of issues like this | and ways that they defeat safety mechanisms with charging. | Ajedi32 wrote: | AFAIK there's no such thing as a standards compliant USB-C | male to USB-C female extension cable. The very concept goes | against the spec[1]. | | You have a point though; I'm sure there are abominations | out there that abuse the USB spec in all sorts of | interesting ways, they just haven't been something I've | encountered in my years of using USB-C for everything. | | [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/10xj74r | /why_d... | kccqzy wrote: | You can make a USB-C hub that has only a USB-C port. | alanbernstein wrote: | Ah, good to know. I'm tempted to respond that this means | the spec has failed to address an important use case. But | I'm certainly not going to learn enough of the spec to | back up that claim. | Ajedi32 wrote: | You're not wrong; it's an unfortunate limitation, even | though there are solid technical reasons for it. As a | sibling commenter pointed out, a standards-compliant | alternative would basically just be a USB hub with a | single USB-C port. | ianburrell wrote: | Then throw it away, it is broken. There is no way to | prevent junk from not implementing the standard. The | solution is not buying junk. | pclmulqdq wrote: | Wait, there already are PD-specific cables, video-specific | cables, and the like. If your cable is short enough, it's not | an issue, but if you want one longer than 1 meter, you will | likely have problems with 4k video on a cable that isn't | specifically designed for high data rates. | Cannabat wrote: | You've been fortunate (or far more clued in to usb standards | than just about everyone) if you don't already have multiple | usb c cables with different capabilities. | | It's possible for noncompliant usb c cable to fry | electronics. | | I don't know of any other connector standard where the | connector doesn't clearly indicate or imply the cable's | capabilities. I'm sure they exist, but generally for consumer | electronics if a cable fits, it works. Except for usb c. | lxgr wrote: | USB-C problems surely exist, but I have _never_ heard of | single-side only plugs, and video-only cables simply don't | exist, yet these are GPs specific concerns. | aenvoker wrote: | I have a USB-C cable that only charges when oriented one way. | IshKebab wrote: | I used a Bluetooth analyser once that had a USB-C connector | that only plugged in one way. It had a dedicated "wrong way | around" LED to tell you to rotate it. | | Kind of hilarious. It's the only example I've ever seen | though so not a real problem IMO. | | The cables issue is real, but I don't really see the | alternative. Would everyone really be happier if all USB-C | cables had to be expensive thick 40 Gb/s 100W cables? No. | julienb_sea wrote: | New iphone ships with a beautiful braided USB-C cable that's | charge only. I'm going to cannibalize the usb-c cable from my | external nvme drive if I ever want to plug the new phone in. | Some usb-c cables are 100W compliant, many are not. None of | them are clearly labeled. | br0wnr1c3 wrote: | The new iPhone ships with a USB 2.0 cable, it does data | transfer, just not at USB 3 speeds | sokoloff wrote: | I have many USB-C cables that don't behave like other USB-C | cables. Just this past week, I had to buy another cable for | my son's desk setup because of the many USB-C cables I had, I | was out of the ones that would carry 4K video and USB-C 80+W | PD to his laptop at the same time. (I had a couple that | worked, but they were in use for my wife and I, and the | couple handfuls of others I had were capable of zero or one | of those two functions.) | pixl97 wrote: | I'm not sure if that's the best example... | | Kinda like saying that I have a bunch of very light indoor | extension cords and you are wanting to run an outdoor high | amperage device (both 110v in this example). Yea, the | interface for both is the same, but one is going to be used | far less often and require a much more expensive cable for | a reason. | terr-dav wrote: | The girth of a power cable roughly scales with capacity | though, and there are 3 common pin configurations | | - 2 equal size blades | | - 2 unequal size blades | | - 3 unequal + ground pin | | plus a fourth for 20A | | - 1 vertical blade, 1 horizontal blade, 1 ground pin | | USB-C cables have one form factor, which is what GP is | talking about. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector | sillywalk wrote: | Not to mention the entire USB naming scheme. | | USB 3 ? or 3x3 or 2x or ...with Thunderbolt or not... | tuyiown wrote: | Not ideal for sure but I don't see the cable disaster you | claim, specifically what clear improvement you would have with | multiplication of connectors. | | Connectors, cheap and reliable are hard to design, and there's | that much solution that works, and economics of scale works | wonderfully by this kind of mass production (the good enough | converges to reliable cheap). Also, the backward compatibility | is real, and not to be dismissed too lightly. Say, for an USB-A | connector, would really go one way where a USB 3 cable and | device should NOT work with your older computer ? | | There will be waste, there will be disgruntlement, but at real | diagnostic will be possible (instead of the vague indications | like <<use provided cable>> we have for HDMI and DisplayPort). | For power, you can already find cable with a mini LED display | on the plug to show max wattage once plugged. | | Limited cables will quickly have label to show their specific | capability (4K/8K, for PD only, 100W 60W), for cables you buy. | General case for cables provided by manufacturer is, you keep | you cable with the device, no real confusion here. | | I know many have the cable drawer full of just-in-case that | never comes that would dream to have it blissfully replaced by | unlabeled USB-C cables, but this is just not how general people | handle the problem. They keep the cable with the device, and | learn what they need before or after buying a replacement, or | better, asking someone in a shop, those still exists for all I | know. | npunt wrote: | I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Once you try to implement any | standard _in practice_ to billions of people & devices you're | going to find the same constraints and similar trade-offs | everywhere. | | Manufacturers are going to cheap out, _always_. There 's no way | around the fact that goods can get on the market claiming a | thing that it doesn't do (perfectly) in practice. Tech is | littered with semi-compliance. I hate to kick the can down to | 'let consumers figure it out' but there's hardly a realistic | alternative, you just can't police ~10 billion cables sold a | year across ~10 million retailers. I haven't heard of your | first example anywhere actually happening, it sounds | theoretical more than widespread in practice in 2023, 8 years | into this USB-C thing. | | As far as cables with different capabilities, what is the | alternative here? | | 1. Physics of signaling demand certain capabilities require | higher quality / more expensive cables. Zero chance you get | people or manufacturers lined up around the idea of highest | common denominator (e.g. 40gbps capable $30 cable when consumer | wants a $3 charging cable), and that's sorta moot anyway | because... | | 2. Standards evolve, and we're all tired of playing the game | we've played for 50 years in tech of new physical connectors | every few years. | | It's either a) you have the same physical connector and | different cables, or b) different physical connectors that | briefly use the same cables before they become differentiated | when standards evolve. | | The reality is 'it works but not as good' (speed or charge- | wise) is a superior tradeoff to 'I have to buy a totally | different cable' in the high % of use cases where 'not as good' | is possible, which is stuff like 'charge my phone' or 'plug my | printer/audio device/whatever in'. | | Honestly the only unforced errors I see with USB-C are consumer | education related. USB versioning should be simple (3, 4, 5) | not intentionally obtuse ("3.2 gen 2x2"), and something like | iconography should be added to indicate premium cable | capability (specific higher voltage & bandwidth capabilities) | to avoid to play the plug in and try it game. | sokoloff wrote: | "I have to buy a totally different cable" is something that | most of us with over 20 devices with USB-C ports on them have | probably experienced, only it's worse than that as it's more | like "I have to buy _several different_ totally different | cables and try to remember to return the ones that _also_ don | 't work". | | For a time at work, our desks had different docking stations | for employees with Mac laptops or HP laptops. USB-C | "standard" notwithstanding. | p1mrx wrote: | USB-IF should publish a table of every possible | cable/adapter/receptacle type, with a short alphanumeric code | that can be printed or molded onto the connector. | | The set of permutations is too large to fit into an icon, but | a lookup table allows for unlimited detail. | Nextgrid wrote: | The standard is also just terrible even if followed to the | letter. The connectors are just too fragile for a day-to-day | interconnect, and a fire risk when higher currents are | involved. | | I've now had to replace 2 USB-C host ports (on expensive Apple | devices, where an "official" repair would cost ~50% of the | value of the device) despite taking reasonable care of my | devices (under which care no other connectors ever failed). | | Examining them under a magnifying glass showed that the metal | pin delaminated from the plastic middle part of the host | connector and was ever so slightly skewed towards the adjacent | pin, presumably making enough contact/interference to make the | whole thing fail. | | In a sane design, a misalignment/skew of <1mm would be well | within tolerance and would be a non-issue. Worse, despite the | machine being from the same brand that ushered all this crap | onto the world, there is no software support or notification to | say that something is wrong - the machine just silently stopped | charging after a random delay. Very annoying when you plug your | machine in to charge and only realize (at the most inconvenient | time) that it silently stopped charging and you've now drained | whatever battery was remaining. | | Even with the new ports, I can make it lose | Thunderbolt/DisplayPort connection by bumping the connector. | It's probably a mismatch of tolerances between connector and | port (maybe my cables are out of spec), but it's never been a | problem with any other connector. | petee wrote: | Are you using Apple, or major-vendor cables? Im curious | because delamination of a pin on 2 separate ports implies | something catching/dragging on it, maybe there is something | either poorly designed, or simply mangled in the end of one | of your cables. | Nextgrid wrote: | Major vendor cables, and the delamination was one | connector's "finger" so not really cable-specific. The | second connector looked fine at casual glance but there was | something wrong with it as it wouldn't even hold connection | with a USB2 device - too much slack. | | I don't recall having this issue with any of the connectors | it replaced. I have devices that are close to a decade old | and all their USB/Ethernet/HDMI ports are still working | just fine. | | It's a terrible design that prioritizes form over | function/reliability. | LoganDark wrote: | My USB hub will allow me to plug in a USB-A connector the wrong | way. When I do, it has some sort of fault and resets all the | ports. I don't know how this is physically possible, but it's | somehow worse then requiring 3 attempts. | mmac_ wrote: | One of my earliest experiences with USB was back in the day where | I had a PC without any USB front ports that were free. So I | grabbed my USB thumb drive and reached around the back of the PC | tower and plugged it in without looking. | | USB didn't show up in the O/S. Thought maybe it wasn't formatted | correctly and went through some diagnostics. Eventually went for | the remove it / plug it back in technique. Had a look at the back | of the PC and noticed I'd managed to plug it into an empty | Ethernet port.... yeah they're about the same width give or take | some tolerance. Also usually placed right next to each other. | | Back on topic, I do find those bare/exposed usb keys (like a | yubikey) to be quite annoying. | stavros wrote: | > Back on topic, I do find those bare/exposed usb keys (like a | yubikey) to be quite annoying. | | I guess you trade one annoyance (how to plug them in) for | another annoyance (too thick for a wallet/keychain). | gs17 wrote: | Done exactly the same thing. No idea why they sized it that | way, at least it usually doesn't break anything. | stavros wrote: | TL;DR: Cost. | Neil44 wrote: | I thought the tongue should have a little bump on the right or | left, so if you're upside down you can tell straight away because | the connector will want to angle over, rather than wiggling and | wondering and doing the standard 3 tries thing. | usrusr wrote: | Making the part that is PCB on cheap USB sticks protrude a | little from the metal rectangle? Would have required slightly | deeper sockets, but I like the idea, would have saved some | frustration. | Neil44 wrote: | Yeah just a little 1mm hump on one side of the plastic | tongue, but yeah the 1mm would have to come from somewhere. | donatj wrote: | It didn't really need to go in either way. It just needed to _not | be_ rotationally symmetrical while only going in one way. | | Firewire only went in one way but it was never an issue because | it's shape conveyed a clear orientation. | jawns wrote: | I agree that there was more that could have been done to signal | correct orientation. | | But an additional wrinkle is that the orientation of the port | itself was not static. On laptops and desktops, it was | horizontal. On certain other devices, it was vertical. Often | these ports were in hard-to-reach or hard-to-see places, and | having to reconcile the orientation in each case probably added | to the frustration. | josefx wrote: | > or hard-to-see places | | Which brings up the idea of not making it size compatible | with the network port. | lxgr wrote: | As somebody who keeps inserting the USB-C charger cable | into the SD card slot of the new MBP, I couldn't agree | more. | stavros wrote: | Not really, HDMI ports are in weird orientation and mounted | in hard-to-reach places as well, but the shape makes it very | obvious (even by feel) which way it should (or can't) go. | This is much harder with the rectangular USB plug. | SAI_Peregrinus wrote: | The "by feel" part is critical. Lots of ports on various | devices are deliberately in the back of the device, or | otherwise hidden, so that the wiring can be kept neatly out | of the way. | putlake wrote: | HDMI is better than USB but it's still hard to do plug it | in in dark, hard to reach places. | c22 wrote: | I have definitely been frustrated by an hdmi port I | couldn't see. I almost always have to gain visibility on | the port to get the cable inserted correctly. If I happen | to already know the orientation of the port on a device I | can do it by feel, but I could also do this with the | microusb-b to my old cell phone. | pnpnp wrote: | It's still better than nothing at all! If you can | physically see the connector, that's a huge help. For | USB-A, you often had to look _into_ the cable to figure | out which way it went. | | I agree that HDMI can be heads or tails based on if it's | tucked behind a TV, but sometimes I can feel enough to | get it right. That was never so with the original USB. | loeg wrote: | HDMI can be a real pain to plug in blind / by feel. | qup wrote: | I think it's worse than USB. It's so damn narrow and has | a requirement for precision. It's hard to know if you've | got it upside-down or you're just not well-aligned. | airstrike wrote: | The fact that the inventor doesn't see this obvious fact | honestly boggles the mind. | lxgr wrote: | Low-level (electrical/logical) protocol design and connector | design seem like pretty different skills! | RajT88 wrote: | It's amazing that it can take you 3 tries to plug in a USB | cable which only has 2 correct ways it can be oriented. | agumonkey wrote: | The funniest part is that it still takes 3 tries even when | you know what you just said. | pdpi wrote: | Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, | even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. | dpratt71 wrote: | It sounds like we'd be better off not knowing about this | law. Thanks. | agumonkey wrote: | I had a variant of that for covid. The contagion curve | plotted daily rates even taking into account people | knowing about the contagion curve. | jowea wrote: | http://www.extremetech.com/wp- | content/uploads/2015/01/lLcxrw... | agumonkey wrote: | hehe, right on | bravetraveler wrote: | I've found a trick but have trouble explaining it to people - | especially if they haven't build a computer before. | | The plastic bit inside of the plug usually goes on the side | facing whatever board it's interfacing with. | | For example, looking straight on from the back of an ATX | case, it's usually on the left side - where the motherboard | mounts | | Front panel connectors are anarchy... but at least they're | usually visible | parsimo2010 wrote: | Another trick is that the USB standard says the USB logo | should be facing up, so you should always try it first with | the logo facing up. Not every device follows that standard | and not every device has a clear top/bottom, but this | really cuts down on the proportion of failed attempts. | cloudwalk9 wrote: | The pattern on the aluminum of the plug is also helpful | in cases of predictable slot orientation (like a laptop, | except a Dell Latitude from back in the day that had | upright connectors on the back unless I'm | misremembering). The side without the seam down the | middle and instead a tiny rectangular cutout center but | slightly lower than the other two cutouts, should face | up. In the dark, the seam can be felt by lightly scraping | with a fingernail. | globuous wrote: | No way! I didn't know that was part of the standard! Very | useful "trick" indeed, unless of course, the USB port is | placed vertically... | bobbylarrybobby wrote: | This gets you down from 3 tries to 2 | bravetraveler wrote: | lol ty, this got me | dghughes wrote: | One trick used to be the UBB trident logo (embossed into | the cable) always faced upward when plugged into a USB port | on a computer. | | Sideways ports may be a crap shoot I'm not sure if their | orientation is standardized. And I'm not sure about modern | USB version if that's still the case of logo faces up. | guntherhermann wrote: | Even after 25 years of using USB devices this _still_ happens | to me, today, in fact! | evanb wrote: | USB is the only macroscopic fermion I know. Try to plug it in | and fail, rotate it 180@ and fail, rotate 180@ and it plugs | in. Must be the minus sign. | OnlineGladiator wrote: | https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-04 | raisedbyninjas wrote: | If the standard included specs on the enclosure, then maybe | we wouldn't need three tries. Especially when plugging these | in blind, like the back of a monitor, I wish the case had a | funnel shaped shroud so you know the male end was aligned | correctly even though it might be reversed. | lloeki wrote: | USB-A too: fat part bottom, connectors up, logo up. | | This also doesn't explain why three-state and five-state also | apply to resp. mini+micro USB-A and USB-B. | | Oh wait, people don't look at the port front and center and | fail to memorize the port direction, irrespective of shape, | that's why. | gsich wrote: | Logo up is no help when you try to do it in the dark. | northwest65 wrote: | You can feel it with the pad of your thumb. | lxgr wrote: | I just looked at my nearest USB-A plug: There's no logo | on either side. | | I'm also almost certain I had connectors with a different | logo on either side. | MayeulC wrote: | Female (host) USB-A orientation is not always consistent, | thought, which adds to the confusion. Thought the orientation | you de scribe is the most common zone, I can recall at l'East | two devices (laptop and desktop) where it was reversed. | slikrick wrote: | That doesn't help vertical orientation of USB-As | jjoonathan wrote: | Hey, they could have made it not rotationally symmetrical but | mandated an orientation opposite of the one that makes the | socket look like a cute little surprised face, thus ensuring a | long, drawn out, losing battle between the correct orientation | and the looks-like-a-little-face orientation. | jonah wrote: | But is "that way" actually "Correct" or not...? | | Technology Connections dig in to this in "Power outlets are | topsy turvy - but does it matter?" | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNj75gJVxcE | lolinder wrote: | The tl;dw is that there is no standard and never has been, | so the idea that there's a "correct" orientation for these | outlets that's been warring for dominance with the cute one | is a myth. | | The rest of the video digs into the claimed benefits of | turning them upside down, and finds that they're quite | small and probably outweighed by the inconvenience of the | sheer number of devices that assume that you're using the | cute orientation. | [deleted] | gsich wrote: | Firewire ports can be inserted the wrong way, if the material | cheapens out you are in bad luck. Wrong polarity will most | likely kill the other device. | yborg wrote: | I can just imagine what the polarized wall sockets in your | house must look like. | lxgr wrote: | > Firewire ports can be inserted the wrong way | | Hopefully only with a hammer!? | [deleted] | hellotheretoday wrote: | Counterpoint: I knew a few people awhile back that wrecked | FireWire audio gear because they forced the connecter in | backward and powered it on | | Even now i do a small repair shop as a side business. Broken | hdmi connectors because someone forced the connector in upside | down isn't exactly common but it's not exactly rare either. | Some people think stuff really needs to be forced together, | apparently | notyourwork wrote: | > isn't exactly common but it's not exactly rare either. | | Using electronics needs a drivers license like equivalent. | Some people shouldn't have access to them if getting an HDMI | connector wrong is an issue. | LoganDark wrote: | > Using electronics needs a drivers license like | equivalent. | | I bet everyone seriously wishes there were a "seriously | honestly just not a fucking idiot" license. The fact that | we know which way a connector goes puts us in a whole | different league from the rest of the population; most | people are so braindead stupid that they can't even fathom | being smarter. Sometimes I wonder if being neurodivergent | is even worth it. Do I even want the privilege of knowing | enough of the bare minimum to outclass half the Earth, if | it means that I'm constantly depressed by how stupid | everyone else is? | | BTW I wouldn't pass a graduation exam if my life depended | on it, because my brain is not a textbook database of | things that I don't care about. But that just means my ADHD | has gotten the better of me. | lxgr wrote: | I have yet to see people die (and/or kill bystanders) by | not being able to plug in an HDMI cable to their home | entertainment system correctly. | notyourwork wrote: | I suppose the joke went over your head, sorry about that. | I found it comical given the HDMI connector shape and how | it would be nearly impossible to get wrong without being | oblivious. | lxgr wrote: | I mean, there already is an integrated element of | punishment - if you don't manage to plug in the HDMI | connector correctly, you don't get to watch any TV :) | bsimpson wrote: | When I was a teenager, I had a Windows machine I used for 3D | animation and an iPod. I needed to charge the iPod and my mom | was calling "dinner!" so I plugged it in quickly and ran off to | eat. | | When I came back, I realized the Windows machine had a cheap | Firewire socket that didn't enforce the orientation. I had | plugged in my iPod upsidedown. | | I don't remember what it fried. I don't remember the iPod | dying, so I'm guessing that socket never worked again. | sytelus wrote: | More interesting question for me is what exactly made USB | possible? I understand that parallel communication wasn't | possible because even for small differences in wire length, data | on each wire will arrive at different times and that limits | speed. So, people went with serial communication. But what | exactly enabled high speed bit transfer? Why wasn't it possible | before? Similarly, why USB2 speeds weren't possible before? What | technical advances made it possible? | labcomputer wrote: | Well, high speed serial coms existed before USB, so the premise | of the question is a bit wrong. RS-422 officially supports 10 | Mbps over short distances, for example, and various serial WAN | protocols supported >100Mbps over copper before USB launched. | | I would argue that what USB (1.1-2.0) does differently from | previous serial peripheral ports is mostly software and | standardization, and really relate to making it cheap and | simple for "normal people" to use: | | 1. USB 1.1 supports only two bit rates (1.5 and 12 Mbps), which | is autoconfigured before device enumeration. 12 = 8 * 1.5, so | the clock divider is cheap and easy. | | 2. USB limits cables to fairly short lengths (<=5m) compared to | earlier serial ports (RS-422 supports 10 Mbps at 15m) | | 3. USB (pre-OTG extensions) rigorously enforced the idea of a | "host" (upstream) and "device" (downstream), at both the | protocol and physical connector level (which greatly simplifies | things--for example, you can't create a loop, and don't need | STP to detect it). A child can easily see that a B (device) | socket doesn't fit an A (host) plug. | | 4. USB device enumeration and configuration are extensively | software based, and USB defines a number of standard device | classes so that many common types of devices (e.g., keyboards, | mice) don't need specific drivers. | | 5. One thing that USB does that's less common among serial | peripheral interfaces is to use a single differential pair for | data going in both directions (it's time-shared: so the host | polls the device then the device responds). The pin-count is | less than a "regular" RS-422 port, but you still get the | advantages of differential signaling. | | 6. USB carries power with only one more pin than needed to | create a minimal bidirectional serial data connection, so | "lite" devices don't need a separate power connector (ignoring | very slow protocols like "1-wire"). | | 7. USB does some funny things with packet framing (like NRZI | encoding and bit-stuffing) and some things to help reduce | device cost (like the JKJKJK packet preamble to sync the device | baud-rate generator and using SE1/SE0 states for device | disconnect and bus reset signaling), but none of that is really | fundamental to making a 10Mbps-class serial interface. | quitit wrote: | I think there is value in remembering that this was an era where | peripherals were plugged in with a view of semi-permanence, most | plugs even had screws. I also remember thinking at the time how | much easier USB was to use than trying to align a PS/2 connector. | | Despite the obvious design drawback, I can't blame intel | entirely, a big contributor to the problem was that the ports | were still being positioned in hard to access areas by computer | makers. The first iMac design was a bit more forward thinking in | this regard, whereby USB ports were prominently positioned on | either side of the keyboard, this made it very easy to plug in | the USB mouse and use the other for something like a USB stick. | The problem with the type A design isn't just the orientation | issue, the rectangular port design provides very little tolerance | for off-angle insertion, having the port in full view helped a | lot with insertion. | SeanLuke wrote: | > It was in 1998 that USB made some real headway, courtesy of the | iMac G3, the first computer to ship with only USB ports for | external devices (there were no serial or parallel ports). | | Um, no? The iMac had an Ethernet port, a phone jack for an | internal modem, and TWO FIREWIRE PORTS. And Microphone and | Speaker jacks. | tuyiown wrote: | No firewire for the G3, and ethernet, audio jack and rj11 | doesn't count for external devices. | _moof wrote: | The first iMac was USB only. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#Specifications | runlevel1 wrote: | The Original Bondi Blue 233 MHz iMac Rev A (tray-loading CD- | ROM) had: | | - 2x USB | | - 1x 10/100 Ethernet | | - 1x phone jack | | - Infrared port | | - 1x audio input | | - 1x audio output+ | | - 2x headphone ports | | +I thought it had two front headphone ports so that two | students could share a computer in school labs, but googling | for that suggests it was probably a later revision feature. | | EDIT: It did indeed have 2 headphone ports on the front: http | s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#/media/File:IMac_G3_Bo... | moffkalast wrote: | It is genuinely surprising that out of all companies Apple | was the one to pioneer USB usage. | | Quite the stark contrast with their current modus operandi of | always making something custom so it can be as incompatible | as possible with anything non-Apple (and so they can sell | more dongles). Well until they were dragged kicking and | screaming to USB-C by the EU anyway. | kube-system wrote: | Every proprietary connector I can think of that Apple has | introduced was done to solve a problem that other | connectors at the time did not solve. | MBCook wrote: | Are you referring to the 30 pin connector, which did stuff | no other connector did? | | Or lightning, which was smaller and easier than anything | else available since USB-C didn't exist? | | You already mentioned USB. Perhaps FireWire? SCSI? Those | were all standard. | | Oh. Laptop power connections? There was no standard until | USB-C, which they use. | | People repeat this, but it hasn't really been true since | they gave up all the custom stuff with the iMac. | dmonitor wrote: | you're completely forgetting Apple being the first company | to go all-in on USB C with their laptops. | | https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/9/8174219/apple-macbook- | usb-... | | It was really only the iPhone that lagged behind, and | that's because they switched to lightning not but a couple | years before USB C was finalized, pissing off everyone who | invested in the 20-pin connector ecosystem. | MBCook wrote: | That always annoyed me. I get that people had to change | cables for the first time since they got their first | iPod, but lightning was such a MASSIVE improvement over | the 30 pin dock connector... I can't imagine anyone would | want to go back. | | I was really expecting something similar with the USB-C | switch but it doesn't seem to have happened. | detourdog wrote: | The Firewire started with the iMac DV in grey. | cushpush wrote: | >But in an effort to keep it as cheap as possible, the decision | was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a | 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly (you can up the odds by | looking at the inside first, or identifying the logo). | | I despise this "design decision." Literally bakes in the 50% of | the time you plug it in the wrong orientation and lose seconds of | your life. Who cares if the sands of time are moving more rapidly | than asteroids? We can save money and make more of these badboys | to fill the landfills with once they're obsolete. Hard to argue | that logic that clearly won via market dynamics. But where are we | now? | chrisco255 wrote: | All I can say is that before USB 1.0, the myriad of connections | on a PC motherboard were ridiculous. USB was leaps and bounds | better beyond PS/2, and VGA and various serial and parallel | ports would require you to physically screw in the plug. Just | look at: https://www.electronicshub.org/wp- | content/uploads/2016/01/Po... | | It was a nightmare. And virtually none of those ports would | self-install drivers when a device was plugged into it. USB 1.0 | was magic when it came out. | dimal wrote: | Agreed. Everyone forgets how awful it was and even though USB | wasn't perfect, it was a huge improvement over the status | quo. For that, I can forgive the inventors for making a | mistake. Nobody's perfect. The travesty is that it took so | long to correct the issue. | TylerE wrote: | If they were going to do that they at least could have used a D | shaped connector or something so the orientation of both the | plug and the port are obvious, even in bad lighting / from an | awkward angle. | chrismorgan wrote: | Fun fact: the Nokia 2780 Flip, despite using USB-C, only accepts | the cable in one orientation. Put a cable in upside down, and | nothing happens. Confirmed with the charger it comes with and one | C-C cable that I already possessed. | | (Additional fun fact: the box says it uses Micro-USB.) | dboreham wrote: | "Ajay Bhatt, widely considered the inventor of USB..." | | Interesting. I had been told long ago that my fellow-Inmosian | Dave Wooten was instrumental. And sure enough: | | "David was principal architect for USB 1.0, USB 1.1, and USB | 2.0." | | from https://ece.ncsu.edu/honor/david-wooten/ | pmontra wrote: | Looking at the logo on the plug is enough to get it right at the | first attempt, but only for horizontal ports on a laptop or | desktop. For vertical ports or ports on the top (chargers have | both types) it's not so easy. | mixmastamyk wrote: | > Someday we'll look back and laugh (or cry) at our early USB | struggles. | | Hah, sounds like the editor is someone too young to have used | serial/parallel/vga ports. Early business PCs, for what ever | reason[1] were built like _tanks_. They weighed dozens of kgs | /pounds. And the connectors were often screwed in with a | screwdriver for good measure. | | Yes, you could wing it when being sloppy, but they weren't always | very tight and cables heavy so you'd want them screwed in for a | long-term installation to avoid issues. | | When USB came out it was a revelation that you just needed to pop | it in and were done. Yes, you'd have to look at it first, but | that was the same with every other port of before that. I | remember PS/2 being perhaps hardest to line up correctly. | | So USB 1.0 fixed one problem, but not every problem. Not exactly | a reason to cry. | | [1] Probably inertia from main/minicomputers which were serious | installations and needed to keep running through wartime. :-/ | jtaft wrote: | Bending a pin stunk. I remeber jamming a flat head screwdriver | into the port to try and straighten | hknmtt wrote: | They didn't have to double the wiring, just add wiring to the | other side of the connector. That is barely 2 cm of wiring, at | most. Also, manufacturers could have made the connectors in a way | that would clearly show which side is the top and which is the | bottom. So none of the issues had to happen but lazy | manufacturers and gullible inventors caused all of this on their | own. | netsharc wrote: | I bought a JBL headset which USB power cable is reversible, | instead of a big plastic piece for half the plug, it has a thin | strip of plastic, so the block of plastic of the port side can | go in either side of the plug: | https://images.nexusapp.co/assets/4a/75/a0/5733575.jpg | | But I guess it might just have two wires (+5V and ground) and | no data wires (I can't check it now because I'm at work). | nyanpasu64 wrote: | I had a USB cable with a reversible A plug, but after a few | months/years it would stop charging (because the pins either | wouldn't make contact with the A socket, or the wires snapped | off the pins). | Someone wrote: | > Also, manufacturers could have made the connectors in a way | that would clearly show which side is the top and which is the | bottom | | The spec almost requires manufacturers to do that. | https://fabiensanglard.net/usbcheat/usb1.1.pdf, page 81: | | "The usb icon is embossed, in a recessed area, on the topside | of the USB plug" | | "Receptacles should be oriented to allow the Icon on the plug | to be visible during the mating process" | | So, there _must_ be a tactile and visual indicator (the | recessed usb icon) and it _should_ be visible. | | They didn't say " _clearly_ visible", though. | cheaprentalyeti wrote: | If they made the connector reversible, you'd have to try to | plug it in five times to get the right orientation instead of | just three... | hknmtt wrote: | :D | OJFord wrote: | I, genuinely, have a USB-C cable which will only charge my | phone in one orientation. | | That's worse than Type-A, since I can't even look at the end | to see which side has the plastic bar, I just have to try it | and obviously it fits, but see if it charges. Which means it | takes about 94 attempts because I only realise the other | end's not plugged in, or it's turned off at the wall, on the | 92nd. | baq wrote: | I have an A-C cable which has a _reversible_ type-A plug | (basically, it looks like a huge ugly lighting plug) and | charges both ways but data only works one way. The first | time I wanted to use it for carplay I lost some hair. | netsharc wrote: | I guess you need to mark the correct sides of the cable | (and maybe the port) with a dot from a marker, so you know | which way is "up"... | OJFord wrote: | Honestly I think I just need to get rid of it! | MBCook wrote: | I've noticed that in devices that aren't _truly_ USB-C but | seem to be USB-B with a C connector. | | They work fine with an A-C cable, even when using that with | a C-A dongle. But often only one way up. | | They're clearly noncompliant. Not that that stops anyone. | robin2120 wrote: | [dead] | Animats wrote: | If the plug actually complies with the spec, and has the metal | shroud as it is supposed to, it works fine, and will not go in | backwards. It's making USB connectors which are just a piece of | PC board that's the problem. Looking at you, Yubikey. | nerpderp82 wrote: | USB was a scam from Intel (and Microsoft) to put the PC at center | of "your digital life". They both feared that Firewire would be | able to send digital streams around and no PC would be necessary. | | This man was ideal for the job of USB inventor. | jdblair wrote: | I used to "bedazzle" my USB cables. Bedazzling is when you | decorate something with little plastic reflective jewel stickers. | I always put the jewel in the same side (the "top") so I could | feel which way the cable should be oriented. Then I could be | confident I had the orientation correct without looking. | | I called this USBedazzling. The other folks in the office didn't | think it was a funny as I did. | dylan604 wrote: | what if the port was in the opposite orientation, or worse, | vertically oriented? | havefunbesafe wrote: | Then you'd have to close your laptop and walk into the woods | forever, I suppose... | dylan604 wrote: | great, so a tuesday, then? | nubinetwork wrote: | I've seen people try to connect ps/2 and vga cables upside down, | and mash all the pins in the process. I'm fine with flipping a | USB cable over a couple times until it goes in. /shrug | tzs wrote: | Back in the days when 200 MB was a big drive for a personal | computer, IBM was working on a 1 GB drive. I worked at a place | that was doing firmware for a company that was going to use | those 1 GB drives in their product, and that company had access | to some of the earliest test units. We were writing the | firmware for that product, so IBM allowed them to loan us a | couple of the drives. | | I once put one of the drives into my test system, and plugged | in the power connector. It used a standard Molex connector [1]. | | The way the drive was mounted I couldn't actually see the plug | or socket. It's a keyed connector so that should not be a | problem. Yet somehow I managed to plug it in upside down which | fried the drive. | | Afterwards I did some tests and found that the plastic on the | connector on the drive was very soft. If you tried to plug in | the wrong way the parts that were supposed to get in the way | due to the keying would just deform out of the weight. | | It took more force to insert it the wrong way, but not more | than was often needed when you happened across a plug and | socket combination that were a tight fit so that didn't tip you | off. | | I reported that to the person who had loaned us the drive and | he told me he'd fried two of them that way. He said that when | he told IBM about that his contact there said that they were | losing something like 10% of the drives during testing right | after manufacturing due to their technicians getting it | backward, and the parts list had already been revised to switch | to a connector hard enough for the keying to actually work. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molex_connector | worksonmine wrote: | I just touch the connector to find the void. It always goes | down and this trick never failed me. I have no problem plugging | in USB on the first try even in the dark. | tinus_hn wrote: | You can also insert the USB-a connector upside down, if you use | enough force. It won't really break anything but it will bend | the plastic part so it becomes hard to insert the right way. | stavros wrote: | This is easily solved by also adding copper tracks on the | backside of the connector! | RandallBrown wrote: | I've seen reversible USB connectors that just have flexible | pins that bend up or down depending on how the port is | oriented. | Cockbrand wrote: | USB A to Micro USB cables with reversible connectors on both ends | have been available for a few years - much too late, but still | useful. I bought some on AliExpress, and while probably violating | some specs, they have been working nicely for me so far. | omgJustTest wrote: | I think people underestimate how cheaply products are made. | | > Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated | twice as many wires and twice as many circuits, and would have | doubled the cost. | | Adding more wires, even if it is a few is not the cheapest one | and therefore not the one that wins. The relative convenience of | a feature is always trumped in early days by cost-to-produce. | | USB-C recently introducing the symmetry of the connector does not | imply that manufacturers will use it... ie you have a symmetric | connector that performs differently based on how it was plugged. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Also, coming from serial/parallel ports, people are not going | to moan that the USB is not reversible. | elondaits wrote: | > But in an effort to keep it as cheap as possible, the decision | was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a | 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly | | They overlooked the statistically significant case where it takes | more than two tries to plug it in correctly. Knowing you might | have been wrong makes you prematurely abandon an attempt where | you had it set the right way. | aranchelk wrote: | My take on USB-A: aside from audio connectors that have axial | symmetry (and have no meaningful orientation), I never used any | reversible computer cables prior to USB-C, and that's not the | main issue. Nor is it the axis of symmetry of the casing allowing | failed upside down plugin attempts. | | The shitty part of USB-A is that the tactile feedback of being | slightly misaligned is identical to it being upside down. My | experience tells me no amount of vigorous jiggling or extreme | self-confidence will ever allow for consistent average 1.5 | attempt plugins. | | All the standards before USB were in my memory even less user- | friendly -- trying in vain to reach behind a heavy computer and | unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, | parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI plug with slippery bent plastic | jacketed heads. Almost zero clearance from the plug case, that | really did suck. Screw it in slightly loser next time, now you've | got a flickering monitor, dummy. | | And ps2/mini-din connectors sucked too - having the connector | off-center or at the wrong rotation also felt quite | indistinguishable. | lxgr wrote: | > trying in vain to reach behind a heavy computer and unscrew | the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, | scsi, vga, or DVI plug with slippery bent plastic jacketed | heads | | Oh yes, that brings back very bad memories. | | Only gradually did it dawn on me that nothing really bad | actually happens if I didn't screw the connectors tight on | DVI/VGA etc. :) | | (Yes, these are technically not plug-and-play, but the | occasional disconnect sure beat all the banging my head on the | desk and swearing profusely every time I changed something with | my personal setup.) | fireflash38 wrote: | It's like VGA cables came with loctite pregooped on with how | hard they were to unscrew. | GuB-42 wrote: | This is what I do with these (terrible) screw-in connectors. | | - Loosely plug in the connector | | - Screw in the right side, relatively tight | | - Use the right screw as a pivot point, by pushing the plug | to the left, this will properly seat in the connector | | - Screw in the left side until it touches, do not tighten | | To unscrew, use the left side as a pivot point by pushing the | plug to the right, this should loosen the right screw, | unscrew it, then, unscrew the left side, which shouldn't be | tight if you did it correctly. | | Note: you can switch left for right and right for left. | | The general idea is to wiggle left and right by using the | screws as pivots. Do this to unscrew if it is too tight. If | only one side is screwed in (don't do that) and it is too | tight, screw in the other side and use the pivot trick. | | I don't like not screwing these in as they have a tendency to | come loose, especially since they also have poor feedback and | chances are that they aren't properly inserted to begin with. | | And side note: another thing I hate with this plugs is that | when you pull out the cable, the plug tends to grab ever | other cable that's on their way. In fact, some of these plugs | look suspiciously like boat anchors and seem to be just as | effective at grabbing stuff. | reilly3000 wrote: | This brought back many bad memories of trying to straighten a | bent pin with needle-nose pliers and other tools that weren't | made of the job. | xorcist wrote: | Ah, the token ring connectors. Not reversible, but genderless. | layer8 wrote: | The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can | remember. The 9-pin joystick ports never caused much trouble. | | Making the USB connectors symmetric in their outer shape but | not symmetrically pluggable was really inexcusable. When it | came out I remember thinking that it was worse than any of the | existing connectors. And this is supposed to be the new | "universal" connector? | bigstrat2003 wrote: | > The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can | remember. | | I never personally had a problem with them, but I can attest | that people did. At my first job (a small computer shop), we | had multiple customers who tried to jam their D-sub connector | on wrong, and broke one or more pins off. Since this was back | in the day when the cable was hard wired into the monitor, | that generally meant they had to buy a new monitor. | nerpderp82 wrote: | That is malicious, you cut off the d-sub connector and put | another one on. I have never heard of someone replacing a | monitor because the pins on the connector were damaged. | bigstrat2003 wrote: | I've never heard of anyone replacing their hard wired | monitor cable. And in any case I certainly wouldn't have | had the skills, so I think "malicious" is an uncalled-for | term here. Maybe my boss (the owner) knew better and | chose to charge people for new monitors, but I definitely | didn't. | hedora wrote: | The best feature of those little thumb screws was that the | computer-side mount could become unscrewed and fall off when | you were trying to remove the cable. On some machines, it was | held in with a tiny little nut on the inside of the case. The | nut was just the right size to fall onto a motherboard and | bridge PCB traces or exposed I/O pins. | | Of course, there was no way to detect this by feel. | postmodest wrote: | At least PS/2 cables were mostly made with "keyed" rubber | jackets where one side was flat and the other rounded, so in | the dark you could tell which way was up. | | (Though, that keyboard and mouse were different ports was | stupid, so it loses points there) | userbinator wrote: | Keyboard was always the one closest to the mobo, since it was | there first (and was originally a larger, more robust DIN | connector); the mouse piggybacked on top of that later. | lxgr wrote: | _Never_ have I been able to successfully plug a PS /2 port in | by haptics alone. | | I can totally see how they were designed to theoretically | allow for it; practically, the tactile feedback for the | correct orientation is just way too subtle. | | And regarding the two different ports: I can't remember (or | rather, I was never motivated to revisit the plugs once | connected to experiment, since it was such a pain) - was | there a technical reason for that, or could modern | mainboards/BIOSes/OSes detect and correct for that? | a1369209993 wrote: | > was there a technical reason for that, or could modern | mainboards/BIOSes/OSes detect and correct for that? | | IIRC, there was a technical reason in that original | mainboards lacked the circuitry to detect and correct for | it (I _think_ different mouse vs keyboard interrupts were | involved?), and it would have been a extra xC/ on the BOM. | But modern mainboards just use two of the same circuit and | in fact do work fine if you swap them (tested just now, | sample size of 1). | AnotherGoodName wrote: | This is somewhat related as it's the next step of the above. | | The floating tongue of the USB connection is in the socket, not | the on the cable. As in the most fragile part of the design is | on the device side, not the cable side. This means that you can | more easily break your $1000 device not the $2 cable. They | repeated this mistake with USB-C as well. | | It's not hard to make a port where the cable is the free | floating tongue and the device is a more robust socket that | wraps around that fragile piece. I know everyone's happy about | the iPhone moving to USB-C but the tongue on the cable side | that it had was much better. Anyone who's tripped on a cable | and broken a USB socket can attest to this. | mtoner23 wrote: | Idk, lightning has the opposite problem where the contacts | are exposed and degrade very quickly on the cable and need to | be replaced constantly. Great for apple. And lightning has | the gripping pins on the phone which degrade rather quickly | too over repeated use. No cable is perfect I fear | Findecanor wrote: | I fail to understand what you mean with plugging a mini-DIN | plug "off-center". Please explain! | | I find it easy to use by feel alone. You can feel when the | sleeve fits the socket. Then you can rotate it in the socket | until it can go all the way in. | ghusbands wrote: | Given the number of bent pins I've seen on mini-DIN | connectors, I think people don't find it as easy as you do. | sbjs wrote: | > Sometime later, I also learned that "three" is usually the | magic number for correctly plugging in a USB Type-A device. It's | a maddening dance and it begs the question, why wasn't the | Universal Serial Bus designed with a reversible connector from | the outset? | | Honestly when this is the biggest problem you face on a daily | basis, your life must be relatively easy. | tommiegannert wrote: | If we're not going back to circular slip-ring connectors that | allow rotation (like TRS or DC plugs,) then the step after the | +-90 _-reversible USB-C is a triangular one. So you only need to | rotate it +-30_ if you got it wrong. Now I really want a | triangular connector. Like in alien-tech movies. | polishdude20 wrote: | Let's go further and get a hexagonal one. | jpeanuts wrote: | This is not so crazy - this was exactly the progression in | screw drives. First came slotted screws (2-fold rotational | symmetry), then Phillips/posidrive/Robertson (4-fold), and | now Torx (6-fold). Going back to slotted now is actually | irritating. | | Of course the constraints and trade-offs are very | different... still it would be a piece of cake to plug them | in on the backside of a box with your eyes closed. | k3vinw wrote: | From the article: "Bhatt's idea for the USB was inspired by his | own experience as a user dealing with tech frustrations far | beyond the scope of a get-it-wrong-the-first-time cable." | | Exactly what made USB so awesome when it first came out. I guess | you had to be there. | Ekaros wrote: | D-sub and likes were lot worse. USB is robust and don't need | things like screws. Din and mini-din also have similar issues. | Compared to either family USB is clearly a more usable design. | pseudosavant wrote: | I think people really need to think about USB Type A in the | context of the connectors it was 'competing' with: DSUB9 (VGA), | RS-232 (serial), DB-25 (parallel), PS/2 (keyboard/mouse). These | were, by modern standards, complete garbage connectors. Huge. | Didn't stay plugged in securely unless the connector had screws. | Only went one way. | | USB 1 stayed plugged in, required no screws, had higher bandwidth | than any data port you'd find on a typical PC, the wires were | much thinner, and it could even power low power devices! Yes, a | design that doesn't take three tries (my average) to get right | would be nice, but it exceeded every existing port by miles. | Audio jacks were the only ports that didn't have a direction back | then. | NegativeK wrote: | The idea of trying to plug a serial, parallel, or VGA cable | into a computer blindly seems hilariously unlikely. | | And I distinctly remember getting excited about upgrading to a | motherboard that supported USB for the hot-pluggability. I was | overexcited, but still. | Findecanor wrote: | Also, those older plugs were more or less not hot-pluggable. | The computer had to be off ( _really_ off, not _standby_ ) | before you plugged/unplugged a cable, or you'd risk damaging | the port and/or the device. | | The only exception I know of is that Apple Desktop Bus (mini- | DIN) had been designed (by Woz !) to be _supposed_ to be hot- | pluggable but Apple cheaped out on overcurrent protection so it | never was. | | Edit: I forgot: in a MIDI connection there is an opto-coupler | behind the receiving end, to electrically separate devices. | snakeyjake wrote: | > Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated | twice as many wires and twice as many circuits, and would have | doubled the cost. | | This is... not correct. | | You can make USB reversible with 1 extra pin and 1 extra wire. | Grounds on pins 1 and 5, data on pins 2 and 4, and VCC on pin 3. | Then have those pins on both sides of the plug and a socket with | a single set of contacts on one side. | | That's BASICALLY what Apple did with lightning. | | Then you implement auto crossover detection, (edit: Gah! you | don't even have to do that just flip the flipping wires) which | had been around for years and is dirt cheap, in the hub. It would | have been like, six, more transistors in the hub IC. | | edit: I completely forgot that reversible USB 2.0 plugs already | exist and use a simpler (and cheaper) method. They just tend not | to be so reliable because of the thinner materials and the fact | that they're not spec-compliant so they tend to be grey market | jobs made for the lowest price possible. | | Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Universal- | Reversible-UR050... | | No doubling of wires or circuits required, just a thin double- | sided PCB. | | Was the connector form-factor inherited from an earlier project | and the players didn't want to design a new one? | whoooooo123 wrote: | The problem with USB-a isn't that it's non reversible, it's | that it's non-reversible _and_ rectangular, so it's not clear | at a glance which way round it should go. | | All they had to do was make the connector have a non- | symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way | round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without | even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively | saved with this minor design change. | davidgay wrote: | That only works when you can see the place you're connecting | to, or have used it many times. | | I've definitely cursed many times failing to plug in non- | rectangular VGA, serial and parallel cables ;) | | [edit: it is still better, but not a panacea] | stevage wrote: | Even having a bump on the rubber moulding as part of the | standard would have solved the problem. | rzzzt wrote: | The USB symbol goes on top, IIRC. | | Edit: ninja'd by an enormous amount of people elsewhere in | the thread, gah. | qup wrote: | This is not always true, and not all ports are horizontal | anyway. | Smoosh wrote: | Heck, just making the plastic insert white instead of black | (now sometimes blue, occasionally orange) would have | helped. | themerone wrote: | They did that from the beginning with USB-B, but they never | standardized an orientation. | m_0x wrote: | > All they had to do was make the connector have a non- | symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way | round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without | even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively | saved with this minor design change. | | I disagree. When connecting an HDMI cable I sometimes have | issues, especially if in a weird angle. | | However I do concede is faster to connect an HDMI than a USB | dylan604 wrote: | Yeah, I want the connector that can be attached by only | moving the TV a few inches, just enough to get my hand to | fit and feel around, not something I have to rearrange the | furniture for and break out some headlight to see which | direction the cable is oriented. With BNC cables, I could | do it with my eyes closed. | rainbowzootsuit wrote: | I find that a USB-A fits reasonably by feel into an | Ethernet port for extra points. | jonny_eh wrote: | For an example of an asymmetrical "rectangle", look at HDMI: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#/media/File:HDMI_connecto. | .. | gzalo wrote: | > Then you implement auto crossover detection, dwhich had been | around for years | | Mdi-x/auto crossover for ethernet was introduced in 1999, that | is after USB (1996) was designed, not sure of the technique was | known at that time | dboreham wrote: | There were auto-crossover RS-232 boxes going back deep into | the 1980s. | sitzkrieg wrote: | with baud rate detection to boot (down the line) | userbinator wrote: | There are also reversible USB plugs that are a single "tongue", | inheriting that design from USB drives that don't have any plug | to speak of but look more like a card-edge connector: | | https://www.pcgamer.com/youre-telling-me-we-could-have-had-r... | | https://2b.com.eg/en/2b-cv177-cable-usb-type-a-reversible-pl... | Waterluvian wrote: | I got these by accident, spent a month thinking I had | incredible USB skills, then discovered and became fascinated | by the tongue. | kybernetikos wrote: | Couldn't original USB have used TRRS? That's better than | reversible - an infinite number of orientations are allowed. | userbinator wrote: | That shorts together a lot of the contacts as you're plugging | it in. | | There are of course various devices which somehow ended up | using TRRS for USB, but unplugging/plugging those while | powered is definitely not recommended: | | https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/rt083u/a. | .. | | http://www.totekinternational.com/35mm-trrs-to-usb-a-male- | ca... | | https://pinoutguide.com/PortableDevices/ipod_shuffle_pinout.. | .. | dylan604 wrote: | >edit: Gah! you don't even have to do that just flip the | flipping wires) | | Isn't that essentially what all ethernet cables do? it's not | like this something never done before. | londons_explore wrote: | Ethernet hardware _now_ has auto-crossover. However, that | hasn 't always been the case. There was a good decade in the | 90's where you needed a special cable wiring if you wanted to | connect two computers vs a computer to a switch. | HeckFeck wrote: | I once used a crossover cable with an old 3Com card and a | Linksys switch - whatever it sent down the wires, the | Ethernet port on that switch was fried and has never done | Tx or Rx since. I bandaged it with electric tape so I don't | connect something else, and also in hope it will someday | heal. | | The 3Com card was unscathed. In fact, it is probably | feeling stronger after that exertion. | Sakos wrote: | Easily going into the early 2000s. I remember trying to | setup LAN parties in 2004/2005, where the wrong combination | of patch or normal cable with hub/switch/PC made everything | a nightmare. | hedora wrote: | Hah! I recently had to put ends on a Cat 6 cable for weird | reasons, and spent a few minutes deciding if it needed to | be crossover or not. | JoblessWonder wrote: | When was Auto MDI-X introduced? A quick google failed to get | me an answer but I remember USB being available while I still | needed a crossover cable to hook up 2 switches. | Scoundreller wrote: | oh god, I was made to be an idiot when I once told someone | they would need a crossover cable to do what they wanted to | do a few years ago... | JoblessWonder wrote: | If it makes you feel any better... for some reason there | are some currently in production business jets that still | require crossover cables for maintenance... so they ARE | still required sometimes. | jbverschoor wrote: | I think he DID explain why: he didn't and doesn't know how | ozymandias12 wrote: | [flagged] | laydn wrote: | It just had to be non-symmetrical on the Z-axis, that's all. Like | an HDMI connector. | simonjgreen wrote: | Or displayport. Personally I find hdmi almost as annoying as | usb, though I can't explain why that happens! | jve wrote: | Because when you have to plug hdmi on a wall mounted tv or | monitor that is close to wall and hard to rotate - you end up | not only guessing orientation but having a hard time to find | that port... :) | simonjgreen wrote: | I feel like it's the aspect ratio of the plug too. Being | long and thin you have to get it perfectly straight AND the | right way round | opan wrote: | One problem with HDMI is that it has no clips or screws or | similar holding it in, unlike DP, DVI, VGA, BNC... I remember | I used to knock the HDMI out of one of my monitors with my | foot all the time. It plugged in going straight up and barely | could resist a bit more force than gravity, and the cable | dangled behind the desk since the tower was on the floor. | stavros wrote: | That has not been my experience with HDMI, I've never had a | cable anywhere close to popping out because of gravity, no | matter the orientation. | NegativeK wrote: | I can not express how much infuriating the DP retaining | clip can be. | | Often manufacturers don't leave much space for fingers | around the cable ends, which means trying to squeeze | fingers in to release the clip. | ruined wrote: | the correct solution there is to manage your cables. | yanking your monitor off the desk would not be an | improvement | aidenn0 wrote: | I still am more annoyed by it being the same width as an RJ-45 | connector. Worse than not being able to plug it in is having it | plug in and not work. | nxobject wrote: | In the same vein, USB-A has a plugin-nable space barely the | same diameter as a headphone jack - there have been a few times | that I've plugged a headphone without looking into an adjacent | USB receptacle. It happened surprisingly often when MacBooks | had USB-A. | whoopdedo wrote: | As annoying as this has been when it happened to me, I also | have wondered if they did it on purpose to make it easier for | assemblers. If the tooling needed for USB, Ethernet, and eSATA | are all the same size you can save cost through reuse. | standardUser wrote: | The entire situation could have been avoided with a notch like a | thousand other plugs and connectors have. | blamazon wrote: | This page was difficult to read on my mobile due to ads. Here is | a link to the source of the interview mentioned in the headline: | | https://text.npr.org/2019/06/21/734451600/ever-plugged-a-usb... | coldpie wrote: | Install an ad blocker, friend! Firefox + uBlock Origin on | Android, or 1Blocker on iOS. | OGWhales wrote: | You can also use Orion on iOS, it has built in ad-blocking or | you can install Ublock Origin extension. | bsimpson wrote: | @dang can we update the src? | devit wrote: | If you have a reversible connector, then you might be entangled | in a dilemma of which way is the "better" or "optimal" or | "canonical" way, while with a non-reversible one there is only | one way and thus no dilemma. | | And in fact USB-C is not really physically reversible, because | the hardware detects which way it's plugged in and permutes the | signals, as opposed to mirroring all the wires, so there is | indeed a "right" way of inserting an USB-C plug, except it's | impossible to tell which it is without a dedicated hardware | tester. | mtmail wrote: | > permutes the signals | | Does that cause a noticable difference, for example lower | speeds? | duskwuff wrote: | > the hardware detects which way it's plugged in and permutes | the signals | | For USB3/4 signals, yes. But the hardware needed to interact | with those signals is complex enough that making it also | support swapping pins is a minor detail. | | The USB2 and power lines, on the other hand, are all present on | both sides. This means that simple devices don't need to detect | orientation; they can connect the duplicated pins together and | everything works. | mananaysiempre wrote: | A USB 2.0 device is usually supposed[1] to just short the two | possible positions of each data pin in its USB-C port (the four | power pins are always shorted, of course, as are the four | ground ones). Orientation sensing only comes into play when you | start using the SuperSpeed lanes (for signal interference | reasons). | | [1] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/application-notes/an1953, | 1.3.1 | lisper wrote: | And indeed there are usb-c hubs that only work in one | orientation so we now have the worst of all possible worlds. | Clamchop wrote: | I'm reluctant to consider shoddy or noncompliant | implementations as counting against a technology. If I did, | then it'd follow that there's no such thing as a good idea, | and I could only agree with that if I were having a bad | episode of ennui. | palata wrote: | > I'm reluctant to consider shoddy or noncompliant | implementations as counting against a technology. | | I find it interesting that it is typically done with | programming languages. "This programming languages allows | people to write complicated, unreadable code, hence the | language is bad". | bigstrat2003 wrote: | In fairness there are plenty of people who think one | should not consider it a language flaw if you can shoot | yourself in the foot. See: basically every C programmer. | ezfe wrote: | I would argue those hubs do not work | hiatus wrote: | It's the same with usb-c extension cords. Our extension | cords now need microcontrollers in them, what a time to be | alive. | mananaysiempre wrote: | Given those microcontrollers are 0.05 USD at worst, meh, | though I acknowledge it sounds a bit crazy if you don't | recognize how cheap micros can be nowadays. Laptop | chargers have used similar schemes (perhaps with bare | serial EEPROMs instead of MCUs) since forever, FWIW. | tester756 wrote: | I can swear I've felt that when I incorrectly plugged my USB-C | to dock station, then I had some crazy issues e.g related to | bluetooth. I tried restarts, adapter unplugs, etc, etc. | | But when I unplugged the cable and reversed it then the issue | disappeared | palata wrote: | I don't really get why people hate USB-A so much. I almost always | plug my USB-A in the first try, because most of my devices have a | clear up/down (e.g. a laptop or a docking station), and the | plastic part always goes down. | | Of course the vertical ports behind a machine are a bit harder to | access, but... well anyway they are. And usually those are not | the ones I unplug/replug often. | snarfy wrote: | I was always hoping for a 3.5mm jack for a connector. | | Radially symmetric, it can go in any direction. I've heard | arguments this could cause connection issues since it could | rotate while connected, causing small contact misses, but I think | that could be designed around. | [deleted] | ghaff wrote: | I used to know one of the people involved in the spec at Intel | and he long claimed to regret they couldn't find a (presumably | politically acceptable) way to make it reversible. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-09 23:00 UTC)