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WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

whatcable.uk

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Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#3
I'm using the hardware tester from Treedix in which you have to plug both ends of the cable and which tests a lot of things, I'm quite fond of it.

I have a basket with a lot of USB-c cables and without the tester I can't remember (nor guess) which one does what.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#4
post #2

Is there something like this for Windows/Linux?

There are options on Linux that you can google up (I don't know enough about any of them to endorse them by linking to one in particular).

As I understand it, Windows doesn't expose the necessary low-level hardware information for something like this to be possible.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#5
post #2

Is there something like this for Windows/Linux?

I came here to ask the same thing. I did find a Linux tool with the same name and purpose but that seems to be an entirely different codebase: https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux

I have a handful of wireless keyboards that just absolutely refuse to negotiate for charging with certain cables at all, so I'm hoping this will help me at least figure out what those keyboards are looking for in terms of cable.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#6
post #2

Is there something like this for Windows/Linux?

"This is a Linux-native reimplementation inspired by darrylmorley/whatcable"

https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux

But (hazard guess) it comes with a headless CLI binary (no GUI libraries needed) so probably could be ported to Linux (easily with an LLM?)

https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#7
post #2

Is there something like this for Windows/Linux?

I came here to ask the same thing. I did find a Linux tool with the same name and purpose but that seems to be an entirely different codebase: https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux I have a handful of wireless keyboards that just absolutely refuse to negotiate for charging with certain cables at all, so I'm hoping this will help me at least figure out what those keyboards are looking for in terms of cable.

[deleted]

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#9
post #3

I'm using the hardware tester from Treedix in which you have to plug both ends of the cable and which tests a lot of things, I'm quite fond of it. I have a basket with a lot of USB-c cables and without the tester I can't remember (nor guess) which one does what.

Nice. You just got them a sale from me. I have a crap ton of cables so this will come in handy.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#10
Great utility.

The only wrinkles for me are that Macs apparently don't interrogate cables when they don't have to, i.e., when the power adapter supplies <= 60W (not sure if that's a USB-C protocol or an Apple implementation limitation) and that the website copy is full of GPT-isms, which makes me suspect that some of the output might be assumed instead of empirically validated as well.

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