USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)

#541

Post by mbar84 » Wed, Oct 11, 2023, 11:40 PM UTC

lesuorac wrote: post #13

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 wish they would even just have standardised on a colour coding or label system or something, so people could find out what a cable supports.

Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)

#542

Post by ilyt » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 9:48 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #514

ilyt wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB1 was designed in times where transistors were significantly more expensive. And in times where laptops or phones or any other situation when you disconnected peripherals were far less common. Like, it still was improvement over PS/2. It's also not just few transistors to flip the lines around, it's also the logic to drive that

Y'all are talking as if you were in the vacuum tube era. There were 42 million transistors in a Pentium 4, I'm sure they could have put a few thousand per USB port if they thunk optimistically instead of pessimistically. When USB came out we already had some very crude 3D realtime rendering already at that time available to mass consumers, I'm sure we could have figured out how to flip power on a port if we put our m…

> There were 42 million transistors in a Pentium 4

USB 1.1 was in '96

That's Pentium 1 era. Pentium 2 was released year after. Pentium 1 had one tenth of that

> When USB came out we already had some very crude 3D realtime rendering already at that time available to mass consumers, I'm sure we could have figured out how to flip power on a port if we put our minds to it.

Why your six neuron brain can't imagine saving pennies on chips used in cheap computer peripherals?

Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)

#543

Post by carstenhag » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 10:49 AM UTC

crote wrote: post #530

carstenhag wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the dozens of manufacturer-specific power ratings which are not PD-conform.

I am not aware of this problem existing in practice. Chargers and devices of course have a wide variety of power ratings, but those are generally all compatible with each other. Just get a charger with a higher rating than the device and it works. When it comes to cables, pretty much everyone just uses the standard 20V 3A / 20V 5A / 48V 5A cables. The only exception I am aware of is Oppo's SuperVOOC.

A 140W MacBook USB-C charger can not charge an OnePlus 8.

A 67W Poco (Xioami) USB-C charger can barely charge a Pixel 6 (it basically runs out of battery while charging, 200-300mA are transmitted according to an app).

USB-C is in a terrible state.

Re: USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (2019)

#544

Post by criddell » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:23 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #481

criddell wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. So far I’ve ordered 3 cables and none work. The first one was a charging cable. I didn’t even know that was a thing and it’s when I started to learn about the differences between cables. My second one didn’t support DP Alt Mode which I seem to need. The third one was a 100W 4k USB Gen 3.1 that supported AltMode, but it just didn’t work reliable (that’s the one that results in the screen blacking out periodica…

Your last paragraph annoys my frugal Yankee nature enough that it’s a long-last resort for me. On my personal desk setup, I don’t charge my Macbook in the same cable that carries video. My wife’s setup is a single cable connection (but she has an Air, so only a single external monitor). Working from home, I undock rarely, so two cables is not a problem for me, but I want a one cable for the kids who will dock/undock…

I found a cable that so far (2 hours of use) has worked perfectly:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1J7Z21J

I have my laptop (Lenovo P1) connected to my monitor. The one cable charges my laptop from my monitor (slowly) and displays 4k video.