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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

#451

Post by booty »

notpushkin wrote: post #376
dns_snek wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heatshrink is great if you're making cables but you would need a really high shrinkage ratio to fit over the connector and then shrink enough, the common cheap stuff is usually 2:1, maybe 3:1. You could cut the heatshrink tube, wrap it around the cable and then secure it with transparent tape. It would slide around but at least it wouldn't leave residue on the cable. Maybe clip-on cable markers like this? [1] Easy to…

I’ve thought about just putting it on the connector itself. It may look stupid though.

Brother label printers (and I assume others) can print text small enough and sharp enough to fit onto USB connectors. (You'll need to manually trim the label with scissors to fit of course)

Visually, if it's something I'm going to be staring at on a daily basis, I like this much better than having tags hanging off of the cable. Tip: consider white-on-black labels.

The labels have been plenty durable in my experience, but if you need extra durability, you could probably just brush some lacquer over it with a Q-tip.

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

#453

Post by booty »

dataflow wrote: post #166
booty wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not for everybody (what ever is, rite?) and since you "hardly have any pairs of cables that are similar enough to be interchangeable" then congrats, you're winning at life and don't need anything like this. The sounds hard Doesn't feel hard to me. I have a bag for USB A, a bag for USB C, and a bag for USB A C. My USB-C charging cables are all 3' or longer, so they're visually distinct from the crappy little cabl…

Definitely not winning at life with this lol, it's actually frustrating because the cables are so similar. One has a higher speed, one has a higher power, one is shorter, one is longer, one is more flexible, one has a display showing when it's connected, etc... and in many cases it's hard to tell which at a glance so it's always a pain trying to figure out if I'm using a cable unnecessarily somewhere and unnecessaril…

Everybody's situation is different but for me, it hasn't been too big a problem really.

There are only a couple of places where I need the fancier cables that can carry video and have super high xfer speeds. Those don't move around because they're connected to monitors and external hard drives and usually come labeled USB4/Thunderbolt from the factory anyway.

The rest of my USB cables are just rando charging cables... attached to various chargers sticking out of various outlets around my house. No data functionality required and I think iPhone and Android both warn you now if you're plugged into a slow charger.... so I don't really need to differentiate these...

    > Re: stiffness: I mean I guess it depends, how big is your bag. I'm thinking like a freezer bag not a grocery bag. I could bend them to fit but then I'd probably mess them up.
A few years back I bought a crapton of 2mil and 4mil clear ziploc style bags in various sizes from amazon. The 6x6" ones are plenty big enough for nearly any modern cable, except for long HDMI/Ethernet. Then those get grouped into big 2x2ft ish 4mil bags.

I guess maybe it is a bit of work in an absolute sense. But, it requires basically zero brainpower. I just sorted and bagged them all up when I was watching a game on TV or something. So it didn't really feel like work lmao

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

#454

Post by DANmode »

jrrv wrote: post #374
DANmode wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not replying to the comment. If you’re using 20 year old hardware, okay - keep 20 year old wires and accessories. Most are not. Put an expiration date on your neuroticism. Old dirty stuff can literally consume you. Ask me how I know!

> Palm III dock, Linksys WRT54G, or Sony PSP charger These are all >20 years old

Correct, and depending on your usecase, threat model, probably obsolete, except the PSP.

Keep what you’re using.

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

#455

Post by elheffe80 »

booty wrote: 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…

I have to admit I am getting closer to being half a century old and this is probably the single best idea I have heard in a very long time. Baggies are cheap af from the 'dollar store' so this is brilliant.

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

#457

Post by alias_neo »

booty wrote: post #449
alias_neo wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For USB, if it can carry 65W+ of power to my laptop as well as the Keyboard/Mouse inputs, 4K/60Hz display and audio back to the monitor as well as KB/Mouse and perhaps some external storage or network adapter, that's a pretty amazing cable. I also have preferences between my cables by the quality and aesthetic, I prefer some over others because they look or feel nicer even if in testing they contain the same conducto…

Wow... have you found cheap cables that are able to display video despite not being advertised as such?

Generally no, you're far more likely to get something that DOESN'T do what's asvertised in my experience.

You can almost always tell the second it's in your hand; in order to do the high throughput stuff, 20Gb, 40Gb etc, the wire is much thicker and stiffer, it needs conductors for all of those contacts. Ive never counted but it's something like 20 of them vs 4 in a standard cable.

Of course always C to C; the A connectors with the extra contacts in between the normal USB 2 ones still aren't enough.

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

#458

Post by brailsafe »

SmasherEpilepti wrote: post #106

Recently, 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.

Hmm, I wonder if this could be the source of an issue with my gaming PC that's using some super budget SATA3 SSDs connected by miscellaneous cables to my relatively newer psu and mobo. Everytime I turn the PC on, it seems to fail to recognize the boot drive and won't POST, but then after force shutdown and restart it succeeds. I think the power cables did ship with the PSU though, the SATA cables came from wherever

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

#459

Post by seb1204 »

lakkal wrote: post #245
OroPla wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember CD spindles? Those are were a quarter of my cables live now. They can be stacked! There's also a few boxes and one tech bag. Also, the 15m (50ft) HDMI cable doesn't fit anywhere so it got it's own space.

I like to use the round Danish butter cookie tins for cable storage.

Nice, I use the kids soccer boot cardboard boxes. There were plenty and they stack well.

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

#460

Post by booty »

alias_neo wrote: post #457
booty wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow... have you found cheap cables that are able to display video despite not being advertised as such?

Generally no, you're far more likely to get something that DOESN'T do what's asvertised in my experience. You can almost always tell the second it's in your hand; in order to do the high throughput stuff, 20Gb, 40Gb etc, the wire is much thicker and stiffer, it needs conductors for all of those contacts. Ive never counted but it's something like 20 of them vs 4 in a standard cable. Of course always C to C; the A conn…

    the A connectors with the extra contacts in 
    between the normal USB 2 ones still aren't enough.
Oh jesus, I hadn't even realized that was a thing!
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