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Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#321
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bags or bins or whatever your preferred organization method is. Don't just have "cables" group them. This is how I discovered "yeah, I don't need all these DVI/VGA cables and I can do with only 10 extra HDMI cables". I'll second "grouping" with "capability sorting". Get a cable tester and sort your cables by Charge/USB speeds. Even with my default "grouping" of things like "USB-C -> C", "USB-A -> C", etc I still…

God, yeah. I try to label the USB-C cables directly by capability with my label maker, if they are more than basic charging cables.

Somewhat recently, on a wild night out on the town, I ended up buying a USB-C USB-C cable tester[0]. Using it, I managed to find a few amazing cables amongst my collection. Gave away the others with context. I want something like this for every type of cable.

[0] https://caberqu.com/20-42-c2c-caberqu.html

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#323
once i had a break in a sata cable. it caused occasional random bluescreens... some data would corrupt going from disk -> mem.

i throw away all old cables and components now. screw the little sh*ts. into the bin before they cause me that level of misery again.

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#324

once i had a break in a sata cable. it caused occasional random bluescreens... some data would corrupt going from disk -> mem. i throw away all old cables and components now. screw the little sh*ts. into the bin before they cause me that level of misery again.

This is the thing I almost, but don't quite, get.

Throw away what doesn't work - either because it is complicated or...its protocol is needlessly contrived.

Next step: do whatever you want. Upstream it, downstream, whatever.

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you fry a whole 12bay drive array and backplane let me tell you this: 6 pin EPS and 6 pin PCIe power cables are not the same. Even though the connector may fit they are not the same pinout.

Looks the same? Should be fine.

uh oh

Re: Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

#329
post #320
post #24

Key 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…

Like everyone, it seems, in this thread, I have not one big box of cables but several. But my classification system is mostly around age: old USB cables (mini, micro) vs recent USB cables (USB C), old screen cables (VGA) vs recent ones (HDMI), etc. This doesn't work for everything: audio cables do not evolve much, nor do remote cables for DSLRs; but in general it's reasonably effective.

As a musician with a modular synth, I have three boxes, two just for audio.

Somehow, after decades of careful curation, the cable I need is always missing!

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