Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
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."
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.
It is expected to be rare, since A to A cables are out of spec.
I actually found an A to A cable in my Big Box of Cables I Might Need One Day™ when trying to flash my Gotek floppy emulator with FlashFloppy firmware.
I read the Wikipedia a little and apparently A to A cables can damage your devices, and the ones that do exist are for specific purposes and should only be used in those specific scenarios, and often they are more than just cables and have some computational stuff inside them
I actually have a double sided male A cable. I was shocked when I got it but I have this laptop cooler that has two A ports on it, presumably to allow a pass through but I'm always nervous that I'll plug it in and fry something.
Cut it in half and avoid the spec violating abomination.
You'd probably be able to remove the cooler's non-compliant a-port and just solder the cable directly.
Then at least it'll be less of an abomination.