101–110 of 232 posts
> This manufacturer claims the cable transmits data at up to 10 Gbps – a speed that corresponds to USB 3.1 Gen 2 – but it only has enough pins and wires to support USB 2.0 at up to 480 Mbps. In any case, this cable accumulated 29 one-star reviews on Amazon and was discontinued the day after we bought it. Pretty much sums up the experience of buying cables in the past couple years.
I'm a bit annoyed that the only comparisons in the article are Apple's gold plated cable and then three random Amazon fly by night cables. I wish they had tested a more reputable cable that was maybe only 1/4 of the price of the Apple cable.
This is why I scan comments before reading the article... I'm more interested in comparison of high quality brands than junk, since I'm already not going to buy junk.
Of course I would prefer too a comparison between reputable manufacturers. :)
This is how you do advertising on HN... The page is a very explicit plug (pun intended?) for their industrial CT products, and it was clearly done for marketing purposes, not because it reveals anything interesting. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison of several cables, basically showing that they're doing what they're supposed to and are constructed as expected. It was even submitted by an account that is clearly…
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I really want my computer to have a built in cable tester. Just plug both ends of the same cable into two different ports of a computer, and it has a little popup saying "This cable can support charging at this rate and data at that rate, and is fully functional". Or "This cable has 1 bad pin, and that may affect video/audio/charging/whatever functionality" Ideally, the computer would test every pin in the cable, and…
It's really strange that even getting a separate testing device is really hard. There are some that test pins and some that can read the emarker, but none affordable that can do both.
I'm curious about the 9-layer PCBA -- is it an amplifier or signal conditioner, to achieve 40 Gb/s? Or does it implement some protocol? Or for power delivery? I see what might be resistors or capacitors. Not sure what else.
It’s most likely 9-layers because that what you need to correctly route the traces from one set of 12 pins, to the other set of 12 pins (to make up the 24 total in USB-C), which is needed to make the connector fully reversible. There will also be a e-mark chip in there that tells any connected device what the cable is capable of doing, so you don’t accidentally send 240w down a cable only capable of carrying 100w. 9…
The high speed pins (4 per side) should be going directly into a multiplexer or driver, the CC pins (1 per side) detect orientation, the sideband pins (1 per side) are only used dual-sided, and the power and ground pins (4 per side) aren't fussy at all.
I wish these were more widely available: https://caberqu.com/home/20-42-c2c-caberqu-746052578813.html... I have one from the kickstarter, and every new USB-C cable gets tested and labeled. Most are USB 2.0. A few will have the power delivery pins. It's such a crapshoot on any shopping site. It should be mandatory that these cables are correctly spec'd and labeled.
> It should be mandatory that these cables are correctly spec’s and labeled Why doesn’t the USB standards group mandate labeling of some type? Probably not words, but symbols would be good enough.
And the reason we don't do that is because it would expose the lie that there can be a universal data and power connector for all devices, and rather than live in a world where everything can connect perfectly fine with the right cables, we have chosen to live in one where the market can be flooded with garbage cables that don't work for your devices. And rather than blame the device manufacturer for choosing a shoddy cable, or the government for forcing them to, we can happily blame the cable manufacturer instead.
If you just slap a label on it, it's not going to fix the problem. No one is going to read them, and people are going to lie.
On the apple cable... That circuit looks like a lot more than an e-marker. Why do we have a massive 105 pin BGA chip in there? Does this cable run iOS or something?
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> It should be mandatory that these cables are correctly spec’s and labeled Why doesn’t the USB standards group mandate labeling of some type? Probably not words, but symbols would be good enough.
Why stop a labeling? You could design the connectors to only terminate at another connector that supports the same features, preventing anyone from confusing one cable for another. And the reason we don't do that is because it would expose the lie that there can be a universal data and power connector for all devices, and rather than live in a world where everything can connect perfectly fine with the right cables, w…
I'm curious about the 9-layer PCBA -- is it an amplifier or signal conditioner, to achieve 40 Gb/s? Or does it implement some protocol? Or for power delivery? I see what might be resistors or capacitors. Not sure what else.
That being said, an odd number of metal layers is very unlikely. It's physically possible but due to the lamination process, PCBs are basically always built in an even number of layers. It's a bit tough to tell with the resolution of the scan, but it looks like the dielectric layers were counted as 9, giving 10 total metal layers.