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Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

arstechnica.com

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Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#111

Post by heyoni »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #107
ksec wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is the single reason why I hate USB-C, and I don't want USB-C to replace lightning. And yet people keep saying USB-C will get better, the controller will get better, the quality of USB-C cable will get better. And Time and Time again it has proved vendors only care about cost, not quality.

* customers, not vendors. Vendors respond to the market.

Sure. That’s why it’s taken decades after the ubiquity of the Internet for movie production houses to put their content on streaming services.

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#112

Post by m463 »

umvi wrote: post #73
loeg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always been a criticism of USB C and it proves true time and time again. USB-C tries to be too many things to too many people and ends up with a huge matrix of incompatibility as a result.

USB in general seems like a deep, deep rabbit hole. You could devote your entire career to becoming a USB expert. The USB 2.0 spec is like 700 pages long. The 3.0 spec is like 500 pages long and requires you to be familiar with the 2.0 spec at the very start. I started digging into USB for a project and the rabbit hole kept going deeper and deeper; I never fathomed the amount of complexity hidden under the hood of US…

That said, the serial cables that preceeded USB had very simple specs that put the brunt of interconnection complexity on the user.

7 bits even parity? 8 bits no parity? hardware or software flow control? how do I know the modem is connected? lots o' fun!

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#113

Post by m463 »

OrgNet wrote: post #94
groovybits wrote: post #33

From a Pi consumer perspective, this is not that big of a deal. However, it damages the purpose (in name) of USB C. Isn't C supposed to be the 'all purpose' spec? If we have popular manufacturers failing to follow the spec, we end up with cables marked as 'compatible with Raspberry Pi' or 'compatible with Nintendo Switch'. To the average consumer (and even most techies), USB C was supposed to be the 'one size fits al…

All purpose spec will be a round connector

We got rid of that for space reasons. courage.

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#114

Post by m463 »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #45
oftenwrong wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB Type-C is an example of the second-system effect: http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/second-system-effect.html

Alternatively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

alternatively,

"There are 14 competing standards"...

https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#115

Post by heyoni »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #91
groovybits wrote: post #33

From a Pi consumer perspective, this is not that big of a deal. However, it damages the purpose (in name) of USB C. Isn't C supposed to be the 'all purpose' spec? If we have popular manufacturers failing to follow the spec, we end up with cables marked as 'compatible with Raspberry Pi' or 'compatible with Nintendo Switch'. To the average consumer (and even most techies), USB C was supposed to be the 'one size fits al…

> From a Pi consumer perspective, this is not that big of a deal. Well, didn't seem that way to me when I bought an RPi4, tried it with two different power supplies and cables, and it didn't work at all. I thought the device was DoA so I did an RME with the distributor. Today I learned a different story, and now I'll have to scrounge up yet another cable to see what the true story is. The one cable I have not tried m…

Would be less of an issue if they included a usb c power cable but they don’t :/

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#116

Post by CriticalCathed »

oceanswave wrote: post #96
silversconfused wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too complex and overreaching is certainly a valid fault.

If a spec defines a fully working part, and you go off and tackle the complexity by designing your own part that turns out to be non-compliant, then the blame is on the spec?

maybe the spec is onerous

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#117

Post by m463 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #57
thijsvandien wrote: post #3

Reminder to self: being an early adopter sucks virtually always. Edit: Sure, the issue is rather easy to circumvent, but anyone would have preferred not to have it. At the very least, it affects the resale value. My point is that whenever the answer to the question 'do I need it absolutely right away?' is no, it's better to wait a bit, no matter how much you intend to buy it at some point.

There is an old joke about the American West which goes, "Q: How do you know which people were pioneers? A: They are the ones with arrows in their back." USB-C is a phenomenally complex system from an engineering perspective, serving at least three masters (compatibility, power delivery, and enhanced performance). As these systems go through the standards process you have vendors designing silicon in anticipation and…

They should have bought arrows with appropriate IFF circuitry.

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#118

Post by pasabagi »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #107
ksec wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is the single reason why I hate USB-C, and I don't want USB-C to replace lightning. And yet people keep saying USB-C will get better, the controller will get better, the quality of USB-C cable will get better. And Time and Time again it has proved vendors only care about cost, not quality.

* customers, not vendors. Vendors respond to the market.

I think the problem is, there's a distinction between a customer and a user. The customer just looks at the object, judges if it's adequate, then takes the cheapest one that meets that rough criterion. That's a very different kind of test to actually using the thing.

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#119

Post by viraptor »

ksec wrote: post #86
loeg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always been a criticism of USB C and it proves true time and time again. USB-C tries to be too many things to too many people and ends up with a huge matrix of incompatibility as a result.

Which is the single reason why I hate USB-C, and I don't want USB-C to replace lightning. And yet people keep saying USB-C will get better, the controller will get better, the quality of USB-C cable will get better. And Time and Time again it has proved vendors only care about cost, not quality.

> people keep saying USB-C will get better

Maybe people remember the beginning of USB. No cable marked charging/data but some are charging-only. Different resistances interfering with charging. USB 1 hubs pretending to be 2. It was all sorted out with time. Now USB 2 seems like magic that just works everywhere, but it really used to suck. (The experience, not the tech itself)

Re: Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4

#120

Post by addicted »

umvi wrote: post #73
loeg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always been a criticism of USB C and it proves true time and time again. USB-C tries to be too many things to too many people and ends up with a huge matrix of incompatibility as a result.

USB in general seems like a deep, deep rabbit hole. You could devote your entire career to becoming a USB expert. The USB 2.0 spec is like 700 pages long. The 3.0 spec is like 500 pages long and requires you to be familiar with the 2.0 spec at the very start. I started digging into USB for a project and the rabbit hole kept going deeper and deeper; I never fathomed the amount of complexity hidden under the hood of US…

The number of pages don't tell you anything though.

I'd assume there are a bunch of reference designs, probably provided by the USB consortium itself, which should make it unnecessary to know anything about the spec to produce a USB C port.

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