Breaking test equipment should probably force a recall by itself. I wonder what the Amazon procedure is for reporting faulty items?
Yes, a recall of the "test equipment".
Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
21–30 of 146 posts
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#22USB-C seems like a really bad standard if the cable can destroy expensive electronics.
EDIT: Even if the cable is wired and built correctly (which is apparently difficult for manufacturers to get right), cables fray and tear all the time. I foresee a lot of dead electronics upcoming.
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#23TL;DR; USB-C cable had GND tied to Vbus and Vbus tied to GND (opposite as it should be) Honestly, I'm surprised that this isn't something that thelaptop and other such USB adapters aren't equipped to deal with. This is only slightly worse in my book than a USB adapter being fried from shorting the Vbus and GND pins together
Why would you design in reverse polarity protection? It adds cost, and the mechanical connector already makes it impossible for VDD to short to GND in USB type C because of its rotational symmetry.
Well, it protects against some metal object getting inserted into the USB port.
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#24TL;DR; USB-C cable had GND tied to Vbus and Vbus tied to GND (opposite as it should be) Honestly, I'm surprised that this isn't something that thelaptop and other such USB adapters aren't equipped to deal with. This is only slightly worse in my book than a USB adapter being fried from shorting the Vbus and GND pins together
Why would you design in reverse polarity protection? It adds cost, and the mechanical connector already makes it impossible for VDD to short to GND in USB type C because of its rotational symmetry.
This was a C-to-A adapter cable.
what was wrong was that the Vbus on one end was hooked to the GND of the other end.
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#25TL;DR; USB-C cable had GND tied to Vbus and Vbus tied to GND (opposite as it should be) Honestly, I'm surprised that this isn't something that thelaptop and other such USB adapters aren't equipped to deal with. This is only slightly worse in my book than a USB adapter being fried from shorting the Vbus and GND pins together
Why would you design in reverse polarity protection? It adds cost, and the mechanical connector already makes it impossible for VDD to short to GND in USB type C because of its rotational symmetry.
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Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#26USB-C seems like a really bad standard if the cable can destroy expensive electronics. EDIT: Even if the cable is wired and built correctly (which is apparently difficult for manufacturers to get right), cables fray and tear all the time. I foresee a lot of dead electronics upcoming.
But the cable was not standard USB-C... that's the problem.
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you design in reverse polarity protection? It adds cost, and the mechanical connector already makes it impossible for VDD to short to GND in USB type C because of its rotational symmetry.
unless the connector were cut, or some other catastrophic failure. I tend to think ruining a devices USB controller should be near impossible short of something like the USB killer ( http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/usb-killer-flash-dri... )
I was playing with a FTDI (a clone :D) and an Arduino and accidentally mixed up VCC and GND from an external power source. I only realised because Minicom was failing to connect to the device. Then I realised what I had done, I tried removing it from the USB port and putting it back in, but it wouldn't work. I then tried a mouse too, but that wasn't working either. Thinking I'd killed a USB port on my Mac (well there are two, so...) I then tried rebooting and that fortunately fixed it.
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you design in reverse polarity protection? It adds cost, and the mechanical connector already makes it impossible for VDD to short to GND in USB type C because of its rotational symmetry.
I constantly have Vdd shorts due to ground loops when measuring stuff. But a more frequent case is worn out cables (every lightning cable I've owned has eventually broke). Its not rare enough of a failure mode to ignore.
Yes, and that's why the USB spec puts the burden of protecting against electrical shorts on the controller. The device side shouldn't have to worry about trying to shunt 100 Watts of power somewhere.
I mean this kind of protection is way beyond typical ESD protection due to the power involved. It would add a lot of cost to do this, maybe even a dollar or two in raw material.
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#29HN has previously had a story on the author, a Google engineer who tests USB-C cables on Amazon to make sure they're spec-compliant. He does some amazing work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494 I don't have any devices right now that use USB-C, but whenever I see a deal pop up for one, I usually check the Amazon listing to see if this guy has reviewed/certified the cable yet. I recommend others do the sam…
Frankly the C plug spec seems overly convoluted.
Each cable needs one of 3 resistors depending on them being a A/B-to-C cable, 1.5A C-to-C cable, or 3A C-to-C cable.
Note that the A-to-C cable may well be able to carry 3A, but it shall never use the 3A C-to-C resistor (what many of the cables he find as faulty does).
Note that all this resistor shenanigans are all independent of the Battery charging spec that has been around for some years, and also the Power Delivery spec that was introduced along with the 3.1 USB spec (can be used for all ports) and the C port spec.
Never mind that a C port has so many extra pins compared to a A or B port, that one would think that id-ing a A-to-C cable would have been as simple as looking for life on any of those extra pins.
Re: Bad USB-C cable destroys laptop
#30USB-C seems like a really bad standard if the cable can destroy expensive electronics. EDIT: Even if the cable is wired and built correctly (which is apparently difficult for manufacturers to get right), cables fray and tear all the time. I foresee a lot of dead electronics upcoming.
Well when the cable has GND and VBus crossed, standard compliance issues goes out the window. This was a straight factory QA failure.