Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

philip.greenspun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 511 posts

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#361

Post by boopmaster »

hotnfresh wrote: post #10
scarface_74 wrote: post #6

One criticism of Apple back in the Ive days was the lack of practicality. I like the fact that Apple relented on the MacBook Pros and they have an HDMI port. I don’t want to have to use dongles unnecessarily. > Apple fanboys/fangirls/fanothers: even the Mac Pro includes two legacy USB-A ports (admittedly it also has four Thunderbolt ports). Why is this relic of old tech cluttering the clean design of an Apple product…

I regularly wish my work MacBook Pro had a single A port. I understand my personal Air not having one—it’s lacking all ports but C—but it’s the one thing preventing my MBP from being as always-useful-entirely-on-its-own as the 2014 Pro I used to have.

I carry a usb a to c cable in my “go bag” to work. It’s a 3” cable with some flex to it. Weighs nothing.

They are in the range of $10 Put in an expense report if IT doesn’t have one for you?

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#362

Post by saiya-jin »

arghwhat wrote: post #354
onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insertion cycles are only for proper insertion. Like when you are looking at it and doing it at a correct angle. Also, rated lifetime does not take into account things like tugging the cable to the side of your PC because your foot got tangled in it. USB C is extremely fragile due to its size and not much can be done to help it. USB C might be created to withstand more insertion cycles. After all it is meant to b…

Funny you say that, I can tell from family experience that USB type A ports are quite fragile to a vertical tug as it breaks the internal plastic bar at its base so you're left with a hole full of floating copper pins. It of course requires more than a light tug, but less than you'd think. The USB-C housing is much more rigid than that of type A, so it should handle this much better. The thinner bar might also handle…

Can't comment on USB-C yet and obviously case point 1, but on my desktop tower (Fractal Design 6, so should be quality) I have for cca 5 years, the frontal USB-A connectors which are used most often, 2 out of 4 are already dead (I'd say maybe 500 insertions altogether, definitely not more). 1 is sort of in between, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

I generally know very well how to take care of electronics and those ports never experienced that dreaded 'vertical tug' you describe, at least to my knowledge.

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#363

Post by necovek »

causi wrote: post #277
jhugo wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re mixing up mini-USB and micro-USB. Also, the board attachment is not strictly speaking part of the connector standard. Manufacturers are free to, and do, screw that up in myriad ways.

No, I'm not. The connector side of micro-USB is usually the failure point. I had mini-USB receptacles fail at an extremely high rate back when I was building and selling mini-USB 2.5 inch external hard drive enclosures back in high school. Micro-USB wasn't even invented until 2007.

Even if you are not mixing them up, your comment is confusing since you are intertwining commentary on both.

Splitting them into separate paragraphs with your assessment and experience on each would help the legibility.

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#364

Post by rowanG077 »

userbinator wrote: post #154

My experience has shown that USB C connectors are far more fragile than A, and every time I plug one in, for some reason the fit just feels vague and unsatisfying. An A plug, when you get it the right way, slides in solidly. As others have mentioned, C seems to have been designed to be the smallest possible, which makes sense for mobile devices, but not for a desktop and its peripherals.

Interesting. This is completely the opposite for me. I have bend a ton of usb-a cables over the years. Has never happened to me with usb-c the connector for industrictable to me.

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#365

Post by reportingsjr »

herbst wrote: post #316
arcticbull wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I surely have. Any even semi-public USB power socket is hanging on by a thread, some of them have the inside paddles snapped off entirely. I haven't seen a Type C one in such a state yet, but I eagerly await it.

My laptop has a opinion which side is up on usb c and doesn't connect the other way around (the way docking stations use) I basically have to replace my laptop to use my docking station just because usb c isn't sturdy enough :/

Did the USB C port ever work that way? Extra electronics are needed to support being able to flip the high speed connects like that. Maybe the laptop never had that?

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#366

Post by necovek »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #337
imiric wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I've experienced flaky connections with several USB-C ports, and sometimes the port itself gets dislodged. I've had devices RMA'd because of it. Nowadays I'm very careful when plugging in USB-C, doing my best to not pull on the cable, etc. It's overall a worse UX than with USB-A, and being reversible doesn't make up for it. Then you have the mess of protocols and standards that use the connector, where I n…

Rather, the cable became universal and the protocols diverged. But I’m fairly sure the situation will be fixed by the adoption of USB-PD as the ultimate power standard. As all the other standards (QC and else) are including it in their own. And the remaining HDMI devices will be phased out in a decade or so. Then you’ll need to only care about the wattage rating when charging devices. Seems like future for me.

What about bandwidth? There are 10Gbps, 20Gbps and 40Gbps cables, along with "wattage" (really, amperage/current).

Both will continue to go up.

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#367

Post by nfriedly »

walteweiss wrote: post #346
dagmx wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you’re conflating data at rest vs data in memory. A pdf for example can be very small but then take up considerably more memory to display an embedded image once it’s done decompressing for render. Similarly text is more expensive just by virtue of higher resolution displays. What we ask of our machines has expanded greatly, and the immediacy with which people want things to load is more exacting too, so a lot of…

I used such a computer (4GB DDR3 ram and 2 GHz dual core Pentium) for some very basic work tasks on Windows 10 LTSC (the one without the bloat). It had Windows due to some weird hardware incompatibility, so I used it for about a month. The computer is used for browser with a couple of Google Spreadsheets opened tabs and a couple of messengers once in a while to reply to some messages. It was almost unusable in that v…

SSD or mechanical hard drive?

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#368

Post by walteweiss »

nfriedly wrote: post #367
walteweiss wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used such a computer (4GB DDR3 ram and 2 GHz dual core Pentium) for some very basic work tasks on Windows 10 LTSC (the one without the bloat). It had Windows due to some weird hardware incompatibility, so I used it for about a month. The computer is used for browser with a couple of Google Spreadsheets opened tabs and a couple of messengers once in a while to reply to some messages. It was almost unusable in that v…

SSD or mechanical hard drive?

Oh, I thought I mentioned! SSD of course!

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#369

Post by rowanG077 »

rightbyte wrote: post #284
onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insertion cycles are only for proper insertion. Like when you are looking at it and doing it at a correct angle. Also, rated lifetime does not take into account things like tugging the cable to the side of your PC because your foot got tangled in it. USB C is extremely fragile due to its size and not much can be done to help it. USB C might be created to withstand more insertion cycles. After all it is meant to b…

> yes, connectors got much better in the past decades Really? How is e.g. the HDMI connectors "better" than the VGA connectors? VGA connectors seems far more robust to me. Same with d-sub mouse connectors. I guess the signal rating is better now but the old ones didn't need high frequency capabilities.

I have never bend the pins on HDMI connectors. It doesn't even occur to me that it could even happen. I have bent dozens of vga connectors. At least you can bend them back.

Re: Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)

#370

Post by readams »

userbinator wrote: post #154

My experience has shown that USB C connectors are far more fragile than A, and every time I plug one in, for some reason the fit just feels vague and unsatisfying. An A plug, when you get it the right way, slides in solidly. As others have mentioned, C seems to have been designed to be the smallest possible, which makes sense for mobile devices, but not for a desktop and its peripherals.

One issue with USB-C is that dust gets packed into the female side. I've found it can be in there so tight that even after attempting to clean it, the dust remains. But going in with a sewing needle, rubbing alcohol, and really scraping you can fix the port.
Post reply on HN