Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

(1) I remember the time I mashed a USB plug into an e-SATA socket and thought I did something horribly wrong, but then I heard the beep saying that the computer recognized the device and I looked it up and found out you really can mash a USB plug into an e-SATA socket and have it work.

(2) USB-C eliminates the problem of putting the cable in upside down, but it adds the problem that there are different kinds of USB-C cable, you might pick the wrong one, get a fake, etc. It's a tough problem to make one cable that can "do everything" but not make the cable to plug your mouse in crazy expensive.

(3) I've seen quite a few devices (PCs and tablets) where the Type-C connectors seem to be floppy and not well connect to the circuit board. I haven't had one outright fail, but I think it's just a matter of time.

View on HN

#1 only worked because the machine you are talking about had one of those nifty dual USB / eSATA ports. If I recall right, a LOT of the Dell laptops my company had -- for years -- had this.

I had a Nexus 5X for a few years and the USB C port started progressively giving out at around 8 months. I had to lay it down flat find a position where it would charge and hope no gust of wind would hit it. Forget charging it while using it for navigation.

I like the idea of USB C, but actual my experience with it makes me happy to currently be on a micro. You just learn which way the plug goes. USB A on the other hand, that's trickier...

While it's possible that the socket is damaged, USB C is designed so that the parts that are likely to break or wear out are in the cable.

I believe micro USB is the same way.

One of the things I don’t like about USB-C when compared to Lightning is that the USB-C socket has some kind of wafer inside it which strikes me as very breakable. I’ve not managed to break one yet, but why was it not put on the cable end as opposed to having the strange male-but-also-female cables we have now.

Do you know what the reasoning behind this decision was?

The wafer has fixed metal contacts on it. The part that mates with the wafer has springy metal contacts, and those wear out. This is one of the major problems with the Lightning port — the springy parts are in the port, not on the cable.

Lightning also appears to have severe problems with arcing.

I see! That makes perfect sense, thanks for replying. I had to search about the arcing problems you mentioned, and I now have an explanation for the blackened pins on my older cable!

> Lightning also appears to have severe problems with arcing.

Well, it IS "Lightning"...

I have never seen or even heard of the spring contacts in the lightning port failing. The biggest issue I've ever seen is lint ingress preventing good contact/locking, which can be cleaned out.

I can't speak to arcing problems.

I’ve seen attempts to clean the contacts damage them because they’re springy. I’ve also just seen them get deformed enough that they stop making good contact.

If I am only charging and not using the cable for data, I have started to rely on imitation Mag safe type plugs for phones and other portables. Since the lifespan on both USB-A and USB-C is limited, hope to make stuff useable until the battery needs to be replaced (if possible) instead of a mechanical failure of the port itself or wearing down the contacts too much for use - my 2012 Macbook pro USB ports are super loose and only work if I plug the cable in just right for this reason I assume.

They make 20-pin magnetic adapters now that can carry data as well as power. Last I checked they were like $30 each.

My Nexus 5X had decided to only accept about 20mA from USB-C (via common A to C cables) if the cable was oriented wrong. Fun times figuring that one out; this is after it had the board swapped or reworked for bootlooping around the original warranty expiration.

Not likely to spend real money on something Google put their name on again.

After like 2-3 months, every micro I've ever had has required me to stretch the cable in some way (i.e., place the phone on top of the cable) in order for it to make contact. Never had this problem with USB C.

It's usually pocket funk, in my experience.

Make a small tool (I use plastic food packaging from something like fresh strawberries) to grab and hook that stuff out of there.

And then, it works fine.

This is rather embarrassing: one of the design goals of USB-C is that it’s rated for a very large number of insertion cycles.

Wikipedia: "Micro-USB and USB-C receptacles are both designed for a minimum rated lifetime of 10,000 cycles of insertion and removal".

AFAIK an insertion cycles test is linear and extremely repetitive e.g. no bending forces and no foreign objects. It doesn't cover the wide range of real world stresses.

I had a similar problem with my Nexus 5X. I worked around it as you've described for quite some time before I realized that a small amount of lint had been compressed into the port, which was preventing the connector from going all the way in.

My Nexus 6 regularly ate micro-usb cables, even the good ones from Anker. Eventually even the port failed and it could only be charged wirelessly. So far failure rate on my Pixel 2 and Pixel 4 has been nearly zero and the only cables to fail are ones I believe I tripped over. Perhaps it has gotten better? If you're still using a 5x you might want to grab a 3a or 3b cheap for an upgrade.

Charging ports are often replaceable. I don't know about the Nexus but I paid €25 to have the charging port replaced on my Huawei phone, within an hour.

Excellent advice and I considered that, but the Nexus 6 had other problems that caused me to upgrade. Also the camera updates on the new phones were compelling.

Re: (1). That's only true for an eSATAp port. Most eSATA ports are not dual purpose like that.

On my work Macbook Air, which has 2 usb-c ports, both have failed over a course of 6 months and now I can't use the laptop at all.

There are plenty of wrong and fake regular USB cables. It has nothing to do with USB-C.

I am not sure about others, but I can not identify, by sight, a USB-C cable capable of safe high rate charging. Nor Thunderbolt. I can’t even tell which charger will work with a device with a USB-C port.

For example, I have a Fiio bluetooth adapter which will not charge with a high rate charger, only a USB-A 5v charger via a USB-A -> USB-C adapter. Is it my MacBook and iPad charger’s fault? The cable’s fault? Fiio’s USB-C chipset fault? Beats me - I have no way to know or find out, since I don’t have the tools to sniff out who is not handling the charging protocol properly (and yes, this could be the cable, since there is silicon attached to the USB-C plugs on both sides of the cable which may be involved in the negotiation as well).

This isn’t a huge problem for me now, since I have very few USB-C cables, and none which are not effectively always plugged into a charger. However, in a decade I’ll have to figure this out with a box of cables with wildly differing capabilities.

>Nor Thunderbolt

It's possible they exist, but I have yet to have personal experience of an actual Thunderbolt cable that didn't have a thunderbolt mark on the connector.

Whatever bug you're hitting is unfortunate but it's not really related to telling cable capabilities by sight.

Knowing the data rate of a cable is an utter mess. But for charging, every cable can do 60 watts. For most purposes the difference between 60 and 100 watts is pretty minor.

Can you tell, just by looking, that this specific micro-usb cable will do data and not only power?

I have a USB power meter and learned that most of my microUSB cables can't handle 2A charging either.

> adds the problem that there are different kinds of USB-C cable

Yes. We went from something remediated by looking at the plug, to something that can’t be remediated without trying it and seeing if it fails.

I've sometimes stuffed a USB cable into an Ethernet jack. It has just enough resistance to feel right.

I sincerely don't understand why ports are soldered to main boards. mechanical decoupling would help

BoM cost.

I really thought not having to embed them in the pcb design and manufacturing would save enough to compensate for the screws on the frame.

When the port fails you buy a new one: ka-ching!

My playstation vita has limped along for years with a finicky edge connector that takes some care to get it to charge. The vita is astonishingly easy to do field repairs on, but you can't replace that connector. It's a good thing that the kind of games I like to play on the Vita come out on Steam these days.

Many electronic devices EOL because of problems with connectors. When I was an undergrad, I think every engineering student in the world had an HP28S calculator, in which the springs would eventually push the batteries right through the battery door. People tried taping it, but short from running it on a bench power supply, none of those engineering students found a great answer to fix it.

"Having to embed" them means it's more easily automated, and screws are cheaper than a flex cable and two sockets.

Same reason batteries are glued to cases, or RAM/SSD is soldered in. Cost, weight, and thickness.

Sometimes when plugging in USB blind I manage to force it into 8P8C Ethernet port..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com