Ethernet hardware now has auto-crossover. However, that hasn't always been the case. There was a good decade in the 90's where you needed a special cable wiring if you wanted to connect two computers vs a computer to a switch.
Hah! I recently had to put ends on a Cat 6 cable for weird reasons, and spent a few minutes deciding if it needed to be crossover or not.
The worst is trying to repair one end of an existing cable and having to think really hard about whether to use A or B wiring.
The problem with USB-a isn't that it's non reversible, it's that it's non-reversible _and_ rectangular, so it's not clear at a glance which way round it should go. All they had to do was make the connector have a non-symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively saved with this minor…
> All they had to do was make the connector have a non-symmetrical shape so that it's immediately obvious which way round it goes when you pick it up - you could do it without even looking. Think of how much time we'd have collectively saved with this minor design change. I disagree. When connecting an HDMI cable I sometimes have issues, especially if in a weird angle. However I do concede is faster to connect an HDM…
The problem with the HDMI connector (well, the problem on topic here) is that it's almost rectangular. Just a pair of small chamfers doesn't cut it.
Display port has a much more usable design, with a chamfer that is about twice the size as HDMI.
Yeah, I want the connector that can be attached by only moving the TV a few inches, just enough to get my hand to fit and feel around, not something I have to rearrange the furniture for and break out some headlight to see which direction the cable is oriented. With BNC cables, I could do it with my eyes closed.
I find that a USB-A fits reasonably by feel into an Ethernet port for extra points.
Oh good, and here I thought I was the only one who had done that... more than once.
Just tried plugging my phone into one of those power banks like that: The phone recognized it was plugged into USB, but didn't start charging. The light on the power bank did turn on though, so I redid it with a USB power meter: The power bank was sucking power from my phone at about 3.4 watts.
> The power bank was sucking power from my phone at about 3.4 watts. At least on Android, there's an option to change the power direction (IIRC, it's in the same place where you choose the data connection mode). I have to use that option to switch the direction whenever I use the USB-C cable to charge my phone from my laptop, otherwise it tries to charge the laptop from the phone.
I know I have that option for wireless charging, but at least for this power bank I can't switch the direction. It says on that screen that the connection is controlled by the other device and fails to switch.
I mean, I feel like they prefer to keep using A-to-C or A-to-Micro because of power flow instead of packaging C-to-C (and from some quick Amazon searches, C output still looks rare, the majority of what I'm seeing is C input and A output on the power bank itself).
Those C input ports are usually also output ports.
See my other responses in this chain; the only power bank I have that has a USB-C port can't use it for output.
I know everybody is still on the high from USB-C but I'm still going to go on the record it will be one of the biggest disasters in cable history. 1) There's going to be video-only cables; low-voltage only cables; etc and this time everything is usb-c so you can literally only tell which ables work by testing all of the dozen cables instead of the 1-2 USB-As you have. 2) The connector is symmetrical but the pins aren…
I had to do a double take after reading this comment to make sure I wasn't reading an old thread from 2014 or something. USB-C has been out for years now and neither of these predictions have come to pass. Your comment aged poorly before you even finished writing it. USB-C isn't without its problems, but neither of those are one of them.
> USB-C has been out for years now and neither of these predictions have come to pass. Your comment aged poorly before you even finished writing it.
Number 1 absolutely has. I've been somewhat in the market for a tester that I can plug both ends of a USB-C cable into and see what voltage, speed, and other specs it supports since most of my cables have zero markings on them.
Anyone bitching about USB does not remember the horrors of serial ports. My favorite cables were the ones where the connector housing metal was so soft it was actually indeed possible to plug them in upside down and bend all your pins. Spent lots of time in the 90s with tweezers straightening pins.
All he had to do was make one side of the connector rounded. But still a vast improvement.
I had to do a double take after reading this comment to make sure I wasn't reading an old thread from 2014 or something. USB-C has been out for years now and neither of these predictions have come to pass. Your comment aged poorly before you even finished writing it. USB-C isn't without its problems, but neither of those are one of them.
I have USB-C cables that look the same, but some of them carry video and some don't. I have USB-C charging devices that will charge off of some cables, but not off the one that will charge my laptop. I now have a box of weird crappy cheap USB-C cables with taped-on notes that say which toys they'll charge. I never had this problem with previous USBs. If the cable fit in the port, it would charge and transfer data. So…
Yep, I've got USB-C cables that only operate at USB 2.0 speeds, drives me nuts. Though USB-A suffered from this same issue, even once we got USB 3.0 it was hard to tell what speeds it supported (3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2 gen 2).
My take on USB-A: aside from audio connectors that have axial symmetry (and have no meaningful orientation), I never used any reversible computer cables prior to USB-C, and that’s not the main issue. Nor is it the axis of symmetry of the casing allowing failed upside down plugin attempts. The shitty part of USB-A is that the tactile feedback of being slightly misaligned is identical to it being upside down. My experi…
This is somewhat related as it's the next step of the above. The floating tongue of the USB connection is in the socket, not the on the cable. As in the most fragile part of the design is on the device side, not the cable side. This means that you can more easily break your $1000 device not the $2 cable. They repeated this mistake with USB-C as well. It's not hard to make a port where the cable is the free floating t…
Basically buy 2 Lenovo X due to the broken usb-c power slot. There is a backup one but for business notebook you fly with you you really do not want a broken notebook.