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Comment by Causality1 | Hacker News Reader

God I miss the days when I could tell what a port was capable of by looking at it.

I've been soldering, crimping, and plugging things in for forty years, and I struggle to think of a connector for which there is exactly one configuration, pinout, cable specification, capability and equipment compatibility for all its use cases seen in the real world.

In my household, USB Type-C has in practice been a great simplifier. Less so at work, but still not more complicated than the multifarious uses of, say, the modular connector family, or the DIN series.

There has just never been a large enough variety of connectors for each application to have an ideally specialized standard.

Especially the greater number of pins, the wider variety of possible uses.

But USB is only 4 pins.

IIRC when USB first appeared on consumer devices, Radio Shack was still going, but USB was the first consumer connector that they did NOT have a do-it-yourself solderable or crimpable cable terminal for, nor any truly appropriate cable. And they never did appear as years went by.

You had to cut your cables in half and splice them to appropriate extensions if you wanted to take advantage of the full 92 foot cable-length maximum under USB 1.

I am less experienced, but my USB C experience has been less positive. Both my partner and I have USB-C phones, from different manufacturers. Both use different "fast charging" standards, and neither of the fast charging standards appears to work as well as with their respective manufacturers chargers (which as a side note are incredibly difficult to find replacements for). I also have a Nintendo switch, which doesn't charge with my MacBook pro's charger, and my switch charger doesn't power my MacBook properly. My car has Android auto, however the cable I was using would cut out if I played audio and used navigation, so I had to buy another cable from a different manufacturer (that cost the same as he first one) for it to work.

I've gone from multiple chargers with different ports, to multiple chargers with the same port, and specific cables with tags on them, and having to explain to my partner that you can't plug x into y, even though they all have the same port.

* Devices are a 2015 MacBook pro, an external GPU, a Huawei phone, a pixel 3, a Nintendo switch, two sets of wireless earbud. For those, I have 4 specific chargers, and two specific cables (3 if you count the moulded plug to the Nintendo switch).

The innergie 60C Charger supports a lot of different voltages. And is super small

It's quite late here and the Huawei charging "standard" has really thrown me, but:

* Pixel - 9V/2A or 5V/3A by the looks of it. A decent USB C charger will do this

* Nintendo Switch - just don't use anything other than the Switch charger or a power bank for this. It's 15V/3A, but finicky.

* Macbook Pro - not familiar with this, didn't realise they went USB C all the way back in 2015, but it probably needs 60W+ and an e-marked cable.

* Huawei phone - if you give me the model number I can probably work this out. It's very hard to work out what that charging spec is, but it may also work with Qualcomm QuickCharge, which apparently makes the USB-IF very sad when delivered over the Type C cable.

I use a charger similar to https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/mbeat-gorillapower-80w-5-port-u..., and I also highly recommend something like https://satechi.net/products/satechi-type-c-power-meter-for-....

I appreciate the response. It's a p20 pro. I realize that I could find a charger that's compatible with all of the devices, but the fact is that all of them claim to be USB-C, and I'm still not sure if I buy a third party charger from a trusted brand (e.g. Anker) if it will work with all devices.

Now imagine explaining your comment to a lay person!

> it probably needs 60W+ and an e-marked cable.

I wasn't even aware e marked cables were a thing. I guess I need something similar for correct Android auto support with my phone and my car?

Honestly, your comment, while incredibly helpful, explains how unclear and how much of a mess it is.

Half of the problem is the USB implementers forum seems to be disconnected from reality and the other half is manufacturers not wanting to use standards

P20 Pro: Uses "Huawei Supercharge" which is not Huawei Fastcharge or VOOC, nor is it compatible with USB PD or Qualcomm QuickCharge. Jesus. I'll cross that brand off my list completely

re: Android Auto - I have no idea, sorry. Double check the cable works correctly to transfer data to a PC (or for tethering etc) - the last time I looked, AA was VNC over IP over USB.

Agreed that the problem is the implementors, but unfortunately that's all that matters. At least when the cables didn't fit I could easily not buy the wrong cable, but now I'm left scouring reddit or asking for help on HN!

> * Nintendo Switch - just don't use anything other than the Switch charger or a power bank for this. It's 15V/3A, but finicky.

The dock can be fussy, but I think the switch itself is fine with anything that doesn't horrifically overvolt pins.

It doesn't like special cables, though. For example, it won't charge off a Dash/Warp charge cable like Oneplus uses.

That's kind of the point though, right? You've got a dock which takes a standard port, same as the console, except _neither_ of them actually respect the standard. It would probably more convenient if they just used the wii u power brick instead

In what way does the switch itself not respect the standard?

Using a generic power brick for the dock wouldn't have much impact. But changing the console itself would be a big loss toward charging it on the go.

Ive found mentuons that certain USB c cables won't charge the device itself, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/5xexiz/fyi_the_one...

It's very confusing to say to a consumer - hey, the cable that fits your phone won't actually charge your switch, even though if you switch cables, it will work with both. Except of course, your phone won't fast charge.

I don't think dash cables are compliant. That's not really something you can blame USB for.

Of course you can't blame USB, they didn't make the cable. But if you have a one plus phone, a Huawei phone and a Nintendo switch (3 very common devices) that all claim to use USB, and yet none of the devices chargers are compatible with each other, who do we blame?

At least when my 3ds, Nokia and razr phones had different connectors, I wasn't going to be under the impression they would work with each other

Would you rather each of those use a custom port and none of those things be compatible at all?

Honesrly, yes. It would be easier to explain to my partner which cable/device/charger combo she can use, and would be easier to find a replacement that I know will work.

For all intents and purposes, they _are_ incompatible already, they're just pretending to be.

They already are incompatible. Just in a much more annoying fashion than ever before because the incompatibilities don't show themselves until you actually try it.

I much prefer to just look at the cable and go 'nope, that clearly doesn't work with that' instead of playing cable roulette.

What ports are you thinking of? PS/2, parallel, serial, VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, USB since 2001... they can all vary in capability. DVI might not? But you have to look really closely to make sure you have the right kind of DVI.

DVI is a pain! Is it analog only? Digital only? Dual link capable?

So glad that HDMI superceded that one.

Hmm? All DVI is digital (except for the analog vsync line).

DVI-A is an analog-only signal that runs over a DVI connector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface#/medi...

Yeah, about HDMI... why did DisplayPort get invented?

higher performance, simpler, can be used internally and royalty free

DVI had the plug-of-death syndrome. the cross-of-metal was mechanically about the worst design choice they could have made. (the wierd connector Sun used, which had three vaguely analog coax connectors was maybe worse)

ok. truthfully, the sliding latch on the Ethernet AUI cut my fingers more. I hated that.

Ha. I hated that damn AUI connector latch. I remember giving David Boggs grief over that c. 2000? He said he thought it was a terrible mistake as well and I think the reason given was it was something they found/was the easy quick choice.

DB13W3? All the old Unix workstations had that video connector, my silicon graphics boxes need a sync on green compatible monitor, so just adapting that connector isn't enough.

Yep. thats the one. love that cable (not)

Yeah but with those you still vaguely know what the port is used for. I have devices with a type c and a micro USB port that only use the micro port for charging. I have devices with a type c port and a separate power connector that can charge over the type c port but only at 500mA. I have devices that can output video through their type c port but only when using a Display Link adapter which on paper needs USB 3 but the device only supports USB 2 data throughput.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that most of those devices are awkward eBay crapware?

Nope. The first is an Asus laptop, the second is an HP tablet, and the third is my Oneplus 6.

> I have devices with a type c port and a separate power connector that can charge over the type c port but only at 500mA.

What a weird design, especially for not even being 900.

> I have devices that can output video through their type c port but only when using a Display Link adapter which on paper needs USB 3 but the device only supports USB 2 data throughput.

They did nonstandard video output on all kinds of previous phone ports too.

But what part says you need to support USB 3 to support an alternate mode with video?

Serial ports (RS-232) were one of the most variable ports ever used. Each device that you wanted to connect to a computer required a differently wired cable. Wires mapped to different pins, pins soldered together. It was a nightmare.

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