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My laptop has two USBC ports. No logos of any kind. They are Thunderbolt 4. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If you’re trying to get Lemmy to print the backslash, you need to make it a double backslash since backslash is an “escape” character that means “ignore any special formatting meaning of the next character” (among other meanings)
Reddit was the same exact way. I don’t know how people are messing it up here too.
Here, you’ve lost an arm: \
LOL, yeah, manufacturers don’t follow this at all.
Last I looked, these (and the “blue plastic for USB 3” convention) weren’t mandated by the spec. So it’s not that they’re violating the spec, but that they’re optional.
And that’s the real issue with the USB spec, almost everything is optional. This would be fine if cables were largely interchangeable, but they’re not.
What they should have are a handful of very well-defined tiers. Cables should maybe have three (basic, mid-range, high end), and ports can have a couple more.
The problem is that there are too many separate dimensions to define the tiers.
In terms of data signaling speed and latency, you have the basic generations of USB 1.x, 2.0, 3.x, and 4, with Thunderbolt 3 essentially being the same thing as USB4, and Thunderbolt 4 adding on some more minimum requirements.
On top of that, you have USB-PD, which is its own standard for power delivery, including how the devices conduct handshakes over a certified cable.
And then you have the standards for not just raw data speed, but also what other modes are supported, for information to be seamlessly tunneled through the cable and connection in a mode that carries signals other than the data signal spec for USB. Most famously, there’s the DisplayPort Alt Mode for driving display data over a USB-C connection with a DP-compatible monitor. But there’s also an analog audio mode so that the cable and port passes along analog data to or from microphones or speakers.
Each type of cable, too, carries different physical requirements, which also causes a challenge on how long the cable can be and still work properly. That’s why a lot of the cables that support the latest and greatest data and power standards tend to be short. A longer cable might be useful, but could come at the sacrifice of not supporting certain types of functions. I personally have a long cable that supports USB-PD but can’t carry thunderbolt data speeds or certain types of signals, but I like it because it’s good for plugging in a charger when I’m not that close to an outlet. But I also know it’s not a good cable for connecting my external SSD, which would be bottlenecked at USB 2.0 speeds.
So the tiers themselves aren’t going to be well defined.
And then you have the standards for not just raw data speed, but also what other modes are supported, for information to be seamlessly tunneled through the cable and connection in a mode that carries signals other than the data signal spec for USB.
Not to mention power-only cables to avoid the security issues associated with cables that permit data transfer.
“Power-only” meaning no data BEYOND the PD devices themselves because its actually a data protocol to negotiate the power output to the device.
Right, which is why it’s so important to define tiers.
For example:
- basic support (cheap) - gen 2 speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; for peripherals and whatnot
- high speed (fast enough) - 5gbps speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; USB drives, regular laptop/desktop ports, etc
- fast charging (general purpose) - 5gbps data transfer, fast charging up to 45W (or maybe a little lower) at various voltages; phones, special laptop/desktop ports
- specialized PD - gen 2 speeds (faster is optional), fast charging up to 240W at various voltages
- specialized data - 40gbps data transfer, charging at 5v 500ma (faster is optional), display out
You’d use the same cable for 1-3, and specialized cables for 4 and 5, and those cables would have special markings on the connector. Ports for 3-5 would have unique markings as well. Cables and ports can go beyond those specs if they want.
Just because you can break things into separate groups doesn’t mean you should. The goal here shouldn’t be to make things easier for manufacturers, but to make things easier for users.
It has to be optional to remain a “Universal” spec.
If it had more requirements, it would be more cumbersome to implement and device manufacturers would come up with completely different, completely incompatible cables and ports (a la Apple’s lightning) that would cause you even more headaches.
“Universal” merely means devices with different capabilities can use the same interface. So you can use mice and keyboards (very low bandwidth needs) on the same port as a data hungry drive. That was the major innovation when USB took over for PS/2, parallel port, etc.
Manufacturers can still use low-end components on the client devices, the requirement would merely be that the ports in host devices and cables would meet some minimum specs to be able to meet USB certification. Instead of having a wide variety of possible configurations, force host devices into smaller niches so the marketing is clearer to customers. Devices would still negotiate voltages, data rates, etc as they do now, the only change would be forcing implementations into buckets.
“Basic”
Insert thank you gif
What are you going to do with this, hang it on your wall like a chord chart?
Thank God there’s a standard for USB. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one…
white P inside a black D
Oh… Oh!
It’s useful but it got me even more lost 😅
So many different standards my god.
The standard might be complicated if you want the specifics, but for everyday use it’s incredibly simple, and I love it. The number of times I needed this information is 1, even though most of my devices, including an external monitor, are USB-C.
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Yeah. I grew up in the days of serial ports and parallel ports, and USB in general is so much better for most purposes. (I recall plugging my first mouse into the serial port…but wait! Where will my Hayes Smartmodem modem plug into then? Also, don’t plug and unplug things from the serial port while the computer is running.)
And USB-C is even better. My tablet needs a charge? Well my laptop charger is right here… My phone is low and needs a quick charge? Well my USB-C tablet charger will give it a decent boost very quickly. No worries about getting it plugged in the wrong way, either.
I have a docking station for my work laptop, so when I had to replace my personal laptop, a laptop that supported USB-C power delivery was mandatory. I don’t use it with the docking station very often, but knowing I can without an issue is great. My wife also has a Macbook that works on the docking station, too, in case she ever wants to use my dual monitor setup. All three laptops, from three different brands, are just plug in and go.
I can’t imagine how you think it’s incredibly simple. These things are hell to explain to pretty much any normal person who needs to know why there’s no picture on the monitor or why their laptop/phone is not charging, or why the keyboard isn’t working in BIOS (no USB 3 support so you gotta switch to a USB 2 port). Add to that the combinatorial complexity of different cables and hubs supporting different things, and no tools for troubleshooting what feature is missing (and where in the chain) or what is suboptimal.
Worse, sometimes it’s my boss who thinks they can cheap out and get a USBC dock instead of a proper dock, forcing me to run at non-native lower resolutions or unable to use a second screen.
No symbol for power-only ports?
These are found almost exclusively on PC/laptops/tablets. Which I’ve never seen a power port only on.
Would be nice to have a standard indicator on the cable side of things.
It gets even better, each function of the port also needs proper support from the cable. Often cables do not support the full spec of usb to cut costs.
While the symbols in the post are often put on computers, for usb cables this is seldom done (only a few brands do).
Source: had to find a cable that supports both DP and PD to connect a portable external monitor after I lost the original cable. (1/9 cables worked)
Yeah, it’s gotten so bad I eventually ordered a USB cable checker to figure out what any given USB cable is capable of (and to see if the cable has gone flaky, which seems to happen a lot). I haven’t received it yet so I don’t know if I can recommend this item, but … gosh darn you sure need something like this.
Yes, this is incredibly annoying and it’s also the reason why some USB cables cost more than others, even they may look the same superficially.
One of those cables that don’t work is rated for like 120W, with gigabit transfer speed… But it refuses to transmit display… Like bruh
That sounds like a dedicated charging cable. So yeah, they will (if at all) only transfer data slowly and not support any extras features like displayport.
A dedicated charging cable wouldn’t have “gigabit speed”
No USB cable has “gigabit speed”. It probably has 480 Mbps (USB 2.0 standard).
Maybe he meant a 5 Gbps Gen1 cable. That would be “gigabit speed” but still rather slow by today’s standards and won’t support DP. They are pretty cheap these days, so wouldn’t be suprising to see left over stocks being sold as charging cables.
No USB cable has “gigabit speed”. It probably has 480 Mbps (USB 2.0 standard).
What? I’m either misunderstanding you or this statement isn’t correct. Having USB cables that can move data at gigabit rates has been common for quite some years.
Here’s the latest stuff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4
Bitrate
20 Gbit/s
40 Gbit/s
80 Gbit/s
120/40 Gbit/s asymmetricWhat? I’m either misunderstanding you or this statement isn’t correct
I meant that no USB standard actually has exactly 1 Gbit/s. I even mention that next one if 5Gbit/s. Just a misunderstanding I think.
1080p at 60 Hz is 4.4 gigabit
Didn’t really think about that one but you’re right damn… (Looked it up, and it depends on the bit depth etc, but it’s around 3.2Gbps for the display settings if I’m correct)… So that explains a lot
Gigabit is capable of like 720p@30Hz which it probably should be able to fall back on, but I understand why they wouldn’t do that haha. 1080p@15Hz is also possible :)
USB-C video is usually DisplayPort Alt Mode, which uses a completely different data rate and protocol from USB.
Even using old 2016 hardware, a computer and USB-C cable that both only support 5 Gbps USB (such as USB 3.1 Gen 1) can often easily transmit an uncompressed 4K 60Hz video stream over that cable, using about 15.7Gbps of DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth. Could go far higher than that with DP 2.0.
Some less common video-over-USB devices/docks use DisplayLink instead, which is indeed contained within USB packets and bound by the USB data rate, but it uses lossy compression so those uncompressed numbers aren’t directly comparable.
For that portable monitor, you should just need a cable with USB-C plugs on both ends which supports USB 3.0+ (could be branded as SuperSpeed, 5Gbps, etc). Nothing more complicated than that.
The baseline for a cable with USB-C on both ends should be PD up to 60W (3A) and data transfers at USB 2.0 (480Mbps) speeds.
Most cables stick with that baseline because it’s enough to charge phones and most people won’t use USB-C cables for anything else. Omitting the extra capabilities lets cables be not only cheaper but also longer and thinner.
DisplayPort support uses the same extra data pins that are needed for USB 3.0 data transfers, so in terms of cable support they should be equivalent. There also exist higher-power cables rated for 100W or 240W but there’s no way a portable monitor would need that.
Luckily, all new PC seem to choose Thunderbolt over only alt mode, which makes stuff more easy, since they have the flash on the cable (but are also more extensive, I gear
Sometimes people want to charge their phone in an outlet 10 feet from their airport seat.
Sometimes people want to transmit 8k video.
It’s not physically possible to do both tasks with the same cable.
But because USB is a flexible standard, we don’t have two incompatible specs to do the same thing. So when you get out of the airport and to your meeting, you can actually plug your phone into the meeting room projector for your business presentation. That’s a win.
“Universal”
My dick fits into all of them
Seems pretty universal to me 😎
I’ve never seen the one enclosed in a battery, but I’ve seen the rest.
What about red USB-A ports, and USB-C ports with no symbol by them at all (like on phones and desktop PCs)?
There is no standard what red USB A ports mean. Could be fast charging through some proprietary protocol or other special features. Or just a design choice.
USB ports with no symbol just don’t advertise what they’re capable of. Most phones support super speed data transfer. Basic USB-PD and display port output support is also common. They may also support other stuff, like pretending to be a webcam, audio output and much more. But you usually have to look in the manual or data sheet to know what is supported.
On desktop PCs, Depending upon the Motherboard manufacturer and model series, it could either mean nothing other than some gaming marketing jargon or…
When a motherboard has both red and blue ports, the Red ones could be those connected directly to the CPU lanes for USB, with the blue ones being routed through the PCH.
If there is just one red coloured USB A port, it might be designated for BIOS updates (unless they have another colour for that).On gigabyte boards, red ports were/are signifying their “ON/OFF charge” and “3x power” gimmicks. Basically means that it’s a usb 2.0, with 1.5A limit over normal 500mA, and remains powered when the PC is turned off.
That meme sucked
Those will legally do pretty much anything depending on what cable you use anyway. (and what cable you end up using is pretty much a surprise until you’ve tested it.)
All thanks to USB making our lives more simple. (yay)
Ok, I suppose it is more simple in quite a few ways.
