Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The funniest part is that it still takes 3 tries even when you know what you just said.
USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
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Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#142I 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.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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
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.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#144It 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.
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.
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.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, t…
The worst connector for that problem is those ----ing antenna leads your laptop has for an M2 wifi card.
I believe those are MCX. My Shure SE215 IEMs (earphones) use the same connector.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#146It 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.
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.
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.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
This gets you down from 3 tries to 2
lol ty, this got me
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#148I 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.
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.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#149I 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…
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.
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.
Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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
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.