cross-posted from: https://lemmy.cringecollective.io/post/75583
why isn’t it ok? why???
Meme “the number of people who think this is an abomination” over a photo of a USB-A to USB-A cable, “but think this is perfectly acceptable” over a photo of a USB-C to USB-C cable, “makes me sick.”
We peaked at USB mini B.
As it being disgusting or great?
Objectively disgusting. How can one connector be so chunky while still being asymmetric?
USB 3 micro B
I am a stupid end user. But I’ve never found an instance where I needed male to male cords.
You’ve never used HDMI?
In general? Off the top of my head I remember these male to male cables.
- Ethernet cables
- telephone cables when they were a thing
- audio cables of different varieties
- optical cables
- coaxial cables when they were a thing
Chargers are now female. So you need m2m to charge your phone
Removed by mod
USB-C is an absolute shit-show. Half a dozen types of identical looking cables all with different performance and compatability. They can be power only, USB-2 only, USB 3, 3.1, 5gb, 10gb. Some can carry 5A, others only 3A. Some may support thunderbolt. Cable sellers and manufacturers can/will claim anything.
For people selling USB-C devices it’s a massive support problem. It looks like the device is defective, but someone may just have swapped out the cable for their phone charger cable and there’s no way of telling.
Yeah just guessing if the cable supports the right usb-c protocol. The port is great. The protocol is horrible you have like 10 different versions of the same protocol. And you have to pray that your cable supports the right one you need.
The joke is that A to A doesn’t make sense.
The joke is that USB-A shouldn’t be paired with another USB-A. It should be using a USB-B on the other end. USB-A to USB-A could potentially be damaging, as both devices will expect to be providing power. USB-B denotes that a device is “receiving” USB, not “sending” it.
It is a fact that USB-C is superior.
The floating tang in the center of the USB-C receiver is a classic “planned obsolescence” design feature. Its built to fail and force you to buy a new device.
Source on this?
I’d love to see a source, I have literally never had the internal flap break and I must have had at least 30-40 devices pass through my hands with USB C by now
Everything from a cheap Chinese brand wireless mouse up to my main phones (which are constantly plugged in and out) to all the random laptops, tablets, Xbox controllers and other peripherals in between.
It’s never happened, though crud does build up in my phone port after a year or 2 to the point that I have to clean it out, but that’s nothing but a small paper clip and 5 minutes
What’s a common thing that would require the use of USB A on both ends?
The only place i ever saw it was on those cooling padas for laptops
nothing worthwhile, as it’s not allowed (for a good reason)
it was common amongst digital cameras in the early 2000’s.
and maybe you could somehow link up two computers as well…? tho that could have been some specialized cables
They make A-to-A cables with a bit of file transfer software integrated into the cord. Useful for transferring big files between two PCs without setting up a network.
I realy don’t want a cable i plug both ends in wrong and have to turn them a couple of times
I actually have a double sided male A cable. I was shocked when I got it but I have this laptop cooler that has two A ports on it, presumably to allow a pass through but I’m always nervous that I’ll plug it in and fry something.
Cut it in half and avoid the spec violating abomination.
You’d probably be able to remove the cooler’s non-compliant a-port and just solder the cable directly.
Then at least it’ll be less of an abomination.
A to B made more sense in a world where devices cannot serve as both roles vai negotiation. My android phone when I got it utilized a data transfer method of plugging my iPhone charge port into my Android charge port, then the Android initiated the connection as a host device.
The true crime is not that the cable is bidirectional, the true crime is that there is little to no proper distinction and error checking between USB, Thunderbolt, and DisplayPort modes and are simply carried on the same connector. I have no issues with the port supporting tunneled connections - that is in fact how docking stations work - just the minimal labeling we get in modern devices.
I’d be fine with a type-A to type-A cable if both devices had a reasonable chance at operating as both the initiator and target - but that type of behavior starts with USB-OTG and continues in type-C.
In the long, long ago, we used to use USB-A to A cables to transfer customers’ Mac OS X user profiles when they would buy a new Mac. Also worked with Target Disk Mode, way back when.
Apple didn’t use FireWire for that?
They did, but the first run of MacBooks we got that didn’t have Firewire would let you use USB. But we needed an A to C adapter to make that work.
I only remember doing this with FireWire. Which model supported target disk mode over USB-A?
The USB spec requires one master and one slave device, which is usually decided by which type of connector each side has. USB OTG can bypass that restriction, but I’ve only ever seen it done with micro USB or type C.
I actually have one of the USB A cables above from an old android tablet that had 2 full USB A ports on the side.
One was always a slave/device port while the other actually had a physical switch to change from Host to Device.
That used to be my mobile media tablet. I could cast wirelessly or steam directly from the mini HDMI port. Such an awesome device for how cheap it was.
“they are the same picture” -my wife
USB-A requires three attempts to connect, C only one.
Six since it has A at both ends.
- 3 for A, 5 for B.
There is no USB-B here and it is pretty hard to get the wrong direction anyway.
I absolutely have some Type C cables that only work one way because there’s no enforced standards and the manufacturer will wire them however is cheap, throw on another company’s logo, and sell it to Amazom.
Gross. I haven’t run into that.
I have never seen this.
There is absolutely a certification process, but playing legal whack-a-mole with fly-by-night counterfeiters is difficult.
This is why buying reputable brands from reputable sellers is important.But even then, I remember years ago I read an article about major retailers selling counterfeit brand name SD cards that didn’t meet the labeled performance specifications and had very poor QC. Turns out that gray market sellers were buying batches of the real product that failed QC and just reselling them as though they were fine, and they ended up making their way back into the distribution network.
In the end the conclusion was that we’re all kind of fucked until retailers start being way more strict about their supply chains, which they are disincentivized to do, because the current system gives them plausible deniability on things like child labor.They’ll also buy the real product, return the counterfeit product, then sell the real one.
Who is “they”?
You have to test the product to know it’s counterfeit. Then you have to return it. Then you have to buy it again and, what? Hope that what they have stocked is from a different batch? I don’t think this is any different between Amazon and other retailers
Don’t buy electronics through amazon. This is precisely why.
Even if you don’t, there is basically no way to tell you’ve got a legit authentic product that passed QC until you test it yourself. The supply chains that give retailers plausible deniability wrt child labor also by their nature allow counterfeits.
You have to get your electronics from somewhere, retailers’ supply chain has a helluva lot more quality control than Amazon. Just because you can’t get to 100% doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive for, well, anything more than the worst chances anyone can offer.
I imagine that “sold by Amazon” has about the same supply chain reliability as big box retailers. On Amazon you do gotta check your seller rating if you’re not buying prime, but that’s not harder than driving to best buy, and big box retailer online stores have the same problem when they’re the storefront for 3rd parties (as many are, trying to emulate Amazon).
On Amazon, reviews can be faked, but at least it has reviews.
You’re wrong. Amazon mixes inventory between themselves and any other seller that’s fulfilled by Amazon, meaning if one random seller has fake product, then even the “sold by Amazon” option can send you that other seller’s fake product. And vice versa, of course.
What if I put a C-to-A Adapter on both ends? Is that okay?
C to A adapters are sick and illegal
I still have some
Why would that be illegal? Shouldn’t there be some way to plug an older flash drive or console cable into a laptop that doesn’t have a type A port? (Ahem, Mac)
This is what I mean. This won’t help in your case.
They might have been referring to an adapter with a female USB type C port and male type a port.
Yea but it’s inefficient. USB-A has a significantly lower transfer rate than USB-C so it’ll bottleneck
USB-A male to USB-A male is not in any USB standard (not entirely true, but compliant cables are very rare and don’t connect voltage), and if you plug it into a device it’s not meant for, the behavior is entirely unspecified. It will probably do nothing. But it might fry your USB controller that is not expecting to receive voltage.
USB-C to USB-C is in the spec, and if you plug in two host devices, they won’t hurt each other. You can actually charge a host device over USB-C, unlike USB-A.
That’s why it isn’t ok. It’s not the same thing, it’s not in the standard, and it can even be dangerous (to the device).
I think the argument that A-A should be in the spec.
But usb-c is just so much better all around.
My WH1080 weather station has a USB-A connector on the device side, I assume for the convenience of the slimmer profile.
That’s the only natural occurrence of that cable I’ve ever seen.
The other one was a custom board printed in 2001 at the electronics class, where I was some kind of precursor by powering it with a USB cable rather than a bulky lab power supply. As I did salvage the connector it was a A-A abomination but they had that cable at the supermarket for some reason ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If you go buy one of those laser engravers off of eBay, for some reason their data in ports are USB-A, and they come with USB A to A cables. My understanding is you can both plug it into a PC and run it kind of like a printer, click Print and the machine jumps to life, or plug in a USB key with tool path profiles on it to use standalone. Why not have a USB-B port for device mode and a USB-A port for host mode is beyond me, I don’t live in Shenzhen.
It is expected to be rare, since A to A cables are out of spec.
I actually have several USB-A to USB-A cables.
Why?
Hub switches, for one. Power is another (usb a is easier to solder on by hand, as well as cheaper)
For the glory of Satan, of course!
you can use them to transfer files between PCs without the need for a flash/thumb-drive I also have a few flashlights that charge in and out through a USB-A
