cross-posted from: https://lemmy.cringecollective.io/post/75583
why isn't it ok? why????
Meme "the number of people who think this is an abomination" over a photo of a USB-A to USB-A cable, "but think this is perfectly acceptable" over a photo of a USB-C to USB-C cable, "makes me sick."
Huh, I'm not sure they are comparable.
Didn't USB A and USB B use a master-slave relationship in which the male would (generally) always be the slave, whereas USB C uses agreement and discussion to decide the master and slave roles regardless of connector gender.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong. Also, do we say "agent" now instead of "slave", or what is the new term?
I believe the common terms now are "domme" and "sub"
I can't tell if this is real life or sarcasm....
Did I really miss the memo on this one?
No that's the lingo the professionals use these days
I can confirm, I'm called sub at work
Ah yeah, I've heard that offices are rolling out a new role of office cumdump. Glad to hear from someone already in the role
I'm going to refer to myself as USB-B from now on
I think the biggest problem I see with A to A is: who's delivering power, and who's receiving it? Maybe if you use it only with the device it came with then it'll be fine, but if anyone tries to just hook up that cable to two random computers, it might actually cause a short circuit and fry something.
Whereas Type-C was explicitly made to handle such situations.
Or a shorter reason: Type-C cable is allowed by the spec while Type-A is not.
master/slave could be primary/secondary, primary/subordinate or principle/agent, so you're correct on that replacement.
I personally am a big fan of "Mantrap" becoming an "Access Control Vestibule" mostly because it's fun to say.
I like controller/peripheral, which is the most descriptive in my opinion. That's what's commonly used for SPI.
In the usb world its "host" and "device", not "master" and "slave".
But yes you are right
Both ends of a USB cable are generally male (unless you're talking about an extender). Generally the type B end (in mini, micro, or full configuration) would be the client though I have seen a couple of clients use Mini or Micro A.
Yeah we’ve been going by primary-secondary where I am for the just 6 to 7 years now but I don’t think a universally agreed replacement for the terms exists yet.
USB-A male to USB-A male is not in any USB standard (not entirely true, but compliant cables are very rare and don’t connect voltage), and if you plug it into a device it’s not meant for, the behavior is entirely unspecified. It will probably do nothing. But it might fry your USB controller that is not expecting to receive voltage.
USB-C to USB-C is in the spec, and if you plug in two host devices, they won’t hurt each other. You can actually charge a host device over USB-C, unlike USB-A.
That’s why it isn’t ok. It’s not the same thing, it’s not in the standard, and it can even be dangerous (to the device).
A to B made more sense in a world where devices cannot serve as both roles via negotiation. My android phone when I got it utilized a data transfer method of plugging my iPhone charge port into my Android charge port, then the Android initiated the connection as a host device.
The true crime is not that the cable is bidirectional, the true crime is that there is little to no proper distinction and error checking between USB, Thunderbolt, and DisplayPort modes and are simply carried on the same connector. I have no issues with the port supporting tunneled connections - that is in fact how docking stations work - just the minimal labeling we get in modern devices.
I'd be fine with a type-A to type-A cable if both devices had a reasonable chance at operating as both the initiator and target - but that type of behavior starts with USB-OTG and continues in type-C.
The USB spec requires one master and one slave device, which is usually decided by which type of connector each side has. USB OTG can bypass that restriction, but I've only ever seen it done with micro USB or type C.
I actually have one of the USB A cables above from an old android tablet that had 2 full USB A ports on the side.
One was always a slave/device port while the other actually had a physical switch to change from Host to Device.
That used to be my mobile media tablet. I could cast wirelessly or steam directly from the mini HDMI port. Such an awesome device for how cheap it was.
USB-A requires three attempts to connect, C only one.
I absolutely have some Type C cables that only work one way because there's no enforced standards and the manufacturer will wire them however is cheap, throw on another company's logo, and sell it to Amazom.
I have never seen this.
There is absolutely a certification process, but playing legal whack-a-mole with fly-by-night counterfeiters is difficult.
This is why buying reputable brands from reputable sellers is important.
But even then, I remember years ago I read an article about major retailers selling counterfeit brand name SD cards that didn't meet the labeled performance specifications and had very poor QC. Turns out that gray market sellers were buying batches of the real product that failed QC and just reselling them as though they were fine, and they ended up making their way back into the distribution network.
In the end the conclusion was that we're all kind of fucked until retailers start being way more strict about their supply chains, which they are disincentivized to do, because the current system gives them plausible deniability on things like child labor.
I guess the usb spec makes you sick then.
With the the first one you can fry your gear, while stuff that takes the second one does auto negotiation.
I realy don't want a cable i plug both ends in wrong and have to turn them a couple of times
Well, if you have asymmetric cables, there's always one clearly-defined host and the other one is the slave.
it works like sex: with usb-c, both devices more or less kinda have ti "negotiate" who's dom and who's sub. that takes extra negotiation effort and makes the protocol more complicated. and therefore more expensive imo.
In the long, long ago, we used to use USB-A to A cables to transfer customers' Mac OS X user profiles when they would buy a new Mac. Also worked with Target Disk Mode, way back when.
I've never seen a USB-A to A cable in the wild, except recently, where I finally unpacked my SATA/IDE USB adapter from Ugreen.
My USB KVM switch uses them
They used to be moderately common in the before times, like 2.5 inch IDE HDD times.
For added horror those often where Y cables, too.
What's a common thing that would require the use of USB A on both ends?
it was common amongst digital cameras in the early 2000's.
and maybe you could somehow link up two computers as well...? tho that could have been some specialized cables
They make A-to-A cables with a bit of file transfer software integrated into the cord. Useful for transferring big files between two PCs without setting up a network.
"they are the same picture" -my wife
I have an external 3.5“ HDD enclosure that has a USB-A port to connect the usb cable to. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea. The difference in price to a B connector can’t be that significant…
I have a similar PATA enclosure. I thought it was cursed until I got to reuse the A-A cable to upload FlashFloppy custom firmware to Gotek floppy emulators without wiring up a USB-serial adaptor.
It's about the winding and not about the USB version, right?
I'm not sure what the point is here. C is symmetrical and has absolutely no downsides, so yes, it's objectively better.
I am a stupid end user. But I've never found an instance where I needed male to male cords.
In general? Off the top of my head I remember these male to male cables.
My WH1080 weather station has a USB-A connector on the device side, I assume for the convenience of the slimmer profile.
That's the only natural occurrence of that cable I've ever seen.
The other one was a custom board printed in 2001 at the electronics class, where I was some kind of precursor by powering it with a USB cable rather than a bulky lab power supply. As I did salvage the connector it was a A-A abomination but they had that cable at the supermarket for some reason ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If you go buy one of those laser engravers off of eBay, for some reason their data in ports are USB-A, and they come with USB A to A cables. My understanding is you can both plug it into a PC and run it kind of like a printer, click Print and the machine jumps to life, or plug in a USB key with tool path profiles on it to use standalone. Why not have a USB-B port for device mode and a USB-A port for host mode is beyond me, I don't live in Shenzhen.
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