I put my cables in bags then in a box. I can't tell you how helpful the bags are. It only took me like an hour to sort the first time. But it's already saved me hours only a year later. Those 5 minutes of searching add up. Just fight the laziness and don't let entropy increase. It's *far* easier to stay organized than it is to organize
Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
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Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#112Whoever does need it, I give you permission to throw out all your old cables, power adapters, and routers. Yes, on the off chance you do decide you need a Palm III dock, Linksys WRT54G, or Sony PSP charger that means you'd have to buy one on Ebay, but you can cross that $10 bridge if it actually happens.
Throwing away proprietary cables is a sin. Throwing away standard commodity USB cables is not so much
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#113How about obsolete cables? IDE, RG59 coax, Cat 5, Composite video, etc...
Depends on if you reasonably expect to encounter one of those devices again and if the future cabling is backwards compatible.
Using your list I'd likely keep one IDE and comoposite video cable, but toss the RG59 and CAT5 because I could use a current RG6 or CAT6 cable in their place.
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#114Recently, I was screwed by my big box of cables, when I pulled out a SATA power connector for my modular power supply, and learned very quickly that though the ports universally fit across modular PSUs, the pinouts are not actually intercompatible, and you can and will fry your hard drives. I didn't know this; I had foolishly assumed that SATA power connectors were standardized on both ends.
They aren't even consistent within manufacturer!
They're standardized on the device side, but not the PSU side. So always check pinout before you make the very reasonable assumption that if it fits it works
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#115Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc. Grouping them is key to deduplicating. It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. And then you can get rid of... maybe 8 of them. I a…
USB B cables are also notoriously sensitive and the slightest damage can result in malfunctions. Went through this recently with a PreSonus AudioBox.
> USB B cables are also notoriously sensitive and the slightest damage can result in malfunctions. Went through this recently with a PreSonus AudioBox.
Do you mean micro-USB-B? Full size (and mini) USB-B cables (comparatively) built like tanks.
Even though it's annoying, I understand the design tradeoff. You definitely would rather your (replaceable) cable get damaged than the port it's plugged into.
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#116Hey! It’s not just me! The other day, someone at work decided to throw away a large drawer worth of HDMI, DP, USB cables that I had neatly organized a couple of months ago. This was to make room for like 5 spare power strips that take up Thank you for listening.
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#117Pencils bags.
Bag the groups of cables by type and then put them in pencils bags and skip the untangling the next time you have to go hunt for one.
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#118"Why yes I do have E1 twisted pair to E1 coax baluns, and 50 ohm BNC to 75 ohm BNC with matching stubs, and VGA to SCART cables, right here in my big box of cables!"
I need to get this under control.
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are ancient usb connections? Type A? B?
Mini-B cables can be somewhat hard to find.
Since school started this year, I bought both my kids TI-84 plus CE calculators. Both were being sold cheap because “no charging cable” (uses a mini-B) while I had a dozen in a box.
I wish that happened a lot less as I have entirely too many old cables.
Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
#120Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc. Grouping them is key to deduplicating. It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. And then you can get rid of... maybe 8 of them. I a…
USB B cables are also notoriously sensitive and the slightest damage can result in malfunctions. Went through this recently with a PreSonus AudioBox.
I have this issue with cables between my Pi 4B and my slightly old 3D printer.
USB-A to micro-B cables, and the connection is tetchy beyond belief about which ones it will accept and which it won't, either with or without the theoretically-unnecessary-for-this-printer power wire blocker. I can see no rhyme or reason to it but now I have a cable that has a dot painted on it...