Don't think of it as a tiny cable, think of it as a gender bender. You can put on the end of some female cable.
You're more likely to see dongles like this at fixed installations. Like somebody puts a USB port into a wall, like a speaker's podium, or a presentation stand. So one side is fixed, depending on what you want to hook up to it, you might need to have a gender bender.
Is the cable considered transgender after that ?
USB is bi-directional. So it really doesn't care about the plug gender. Some other protocols are directional, then the plug gender is very important, so adapters for directional protocols tend to be more expensive, it may even require external power.
Once USB on the go was invented it cease to matter at all.
Today I learnt my sexuality is USB
Universal Sexual Bus?
What your describing sounds more like a double ended dildo
As long as the double ended dildo provided low impedance electrical through ways, and distinct electrical paths for at least four conduits, with minimal capacitive cross talk... then yes
I like you and your style. Do not let a stupid dirty joke get in the way of proper electrical and data connections. It tells me where your priorities are and I respect that.
I prefer to only have the two power contacts connected if you're going to do it with a device you don't know; use protection people.
double ended dildo
Isn't that just a gender bender for women? Now we just need a double ended fleshlight for equality... And no I'm not going to google that!
Ass to ass
The stars of username, comment and upvotes
I want to upvote but I cant.
Have you never just wanted to plug 2 PCs into each other back to back?
Ass to ass as it were
))><((
$ $ $ $ $ $ $
I'm so happy people still know this movie.
Back and forth, forever.
It turn@ a usb extension cable into a regular usb
I guess that could be a use case?
Or turn 2 extension cords into a long one.
But a serious answer is that these are sometimes sold in a kit of adapters that would let you change the head. Most kits like used a normal cord as the base cord, but some used USB extension cords as the base cord. So this is meant to be a replacement part, not useful in its own right.
If you think about it, this is the USB equivalent of a double ended dildo
does this mean there's also double ended flesh lights?
Isn't that the nickname of your mum?
Such A-to-A adaptors and cables always have been prohibited by the USB spec, but people built them anyway. A common usecase for "illegal" A-A cables i remember was connecting PCIe cards (especially GPUs and mining cards) externally to riser sockets.
I have an external 3,5โ HDD enclosure that needs a male to male USB 3.0 A cable to plug into a PC.
Still wondering, why they didnโt use Bโฆ
That's really odd. Why use a host connector when a client connector is intended for the purpose.
Did they entirely miss the purpose of USB?
Cost? A USB-A 3.0 connector is probably a few cents cheaper than a B 3.0 connector
Yeah, it must be that.
I bought a breadboard power supply and the options to feed it power are a barrel jack and usb-a. Considering the size of the thing mini or micro would have made way more sense.
The ones I have go trough the onboard voltage regulator and you can use them to power USB-devices. I suppose they've skipped diodes and other protective components so it can feed back to the circuit, but I haven't tested that.
I have a similar caddy. Many years old now. The connection to the host computer is a USB-A female, so connecting it requires a male to male cable.
In 2001 the directionality became kind of moot. Especially if you want to do attach something with an on-the-go host
An OTG setup needs all 5 pins of the micro-B connector. USB A cannot be used for OTG. If a USB-A port can act as a client, that's not OTG, it's a botched implementation.
Iโve used them for extension, as it allows you to attach a second, regular USB cable to it.
Well, what do you mean by "regular"? The cable would need to be female on at least one end, which I usually see in... USB extension cables.
Not that you probably need to know this, but for some other stranger: there's a max functional length to USB cables. At work I remember pulling my hair out troubleshooting a printer until we swapped cables for something shorter.
And that max length goes down with each coupling.
We have smart boards in most classrooms, but in an entire wing of my department the smart board doesn't work. Reason? When we built the wing, 8 or 10 years ago, the installers fitted their own low grade plugs on the USB connection for the boards, before figuring out that they snipped the cables too short. Instead of running new cabling the installers then introduced another extension.
Nobody cared to check it out before accepting delivery and my complaints went unheard by management, until it was too late to RMA it.
That said, there are "active" USB extension cables which draw current from the power lines and use it to boost the signal along the data lines
Meanwhile I have 25ft cables running my large format vinyl printers lol
My large format vinyl printer uses Ethernet.
TIL there are USB vinyl printers. What kind of printer do you have? Latex 260 here
We had a 53" US Cutter and it attached to the computer by USB. If we're talking about the same thing.
He said printer though that's what's what threw me off. That's a cutter. My bad I thought he was talking about a USB large format printer, I only replied because I'm looking for a slightly smaller printer for my smaller decals, and I'd be interested in a serial or USB printer.
My PC is in the basement and I've got USB and serial going everywhere running different cutters, 3d printers, CNC, etc upstairs and down, also in the garage. Works great.
I dunno but it bothers me how much plastic wrapping that fucking thing apparently needs.
To connect two USB-A ports.
Basically the same as a USB-A to USB-A cable, just really short.
USB-A to USB-A cables do not exist, the USB standard does not allow them, if you have a cable with two USB-A connectors then itโs not actually a certified USB cable. The same goes for USB extension cables and this adapter. Note how there isnโt a โUSB certifiedโ logo on the package.
The cables exist; they just don't follow the standard. I've used them when developing consumer electronics: the host controller on the device switches to device mode in the bootloader, allowing a host machine to connect and debug/flash the device.
USB-A to USB-A cables do not exist
wtf are you talking about, of course they do.
They meant cables in spec with the USB specification at the time usb-a was new.
Now with usb-c, it's kinda moot, as most cables are male to male anyway.. of course that means we're more likely to see USB-C female to female adopters now
USB-C female to female adapters also are out of spec. The USB standard does not allow for extensions. USB cables only have male connectors (with the exception of USB-OTG dongles).
Show me where in the USB standards these are specified.
This is like saying that a building isn't a building if it's not up to code
Or like saying usb-a to usb-c adapters don't exist because they're not part of the standard but we all have like six of those damn things even though we've never actually bought a single one.
But those are actually part of the standard.
Are they? Everything I can find seems to say they aren't.
I remember when the first usb-c Macbooks hit stores Apple didn't have usb-a to c adapters for sale because they weren't in spec, a lot of reviews mentioned that.
I have seen many (very cheap) peripherals use USB-A sockets. I figure those sockets must be a few cents cheaper than alternatives.
And there was a USB certified logo on these cables and devices?
China stuff loves to slap logos on there that do not apply, so probably without having seen this particular abomination myself. Fake CE markings are super common though.
USB-A to USB-A doesn't exist
*looks at old charger from an American device*
HOLY SHIT A CRYPTID CALL SCP
Thatโs not a USB charger.
HOLY SHIT AN UNIDENTIFIED CRYPTID CALL SCOOBYDOO!
Itโs not hard to imagine a product that would require one, though. Itโs how every phone charging cable works, just with a different size male USB on one end.
Itโs how every phone charging cable works, just with a different size male USB on one end.
No, it's exactly not how every phone charging cable works, at least not for non USB-C cables.
Pre-USB-C cables are explicitly unidirectional. In USB there are 'hosts' (usually computers) and 'devices' (flashdrives, camera's, mice, keyboards, etc.). The host side always has a female USB-A connector, a device either has a female USB-B connector (if it's intended to be used with a cable), or a male USB-A (if it's intended to be plugged in directly into a host, like a flash drive). A real, standard-conformant USB cable can only go from USB-A male to USB-B male (with the addition of USB-C, it can also go from A-to-C, from C-to-B, or C-to-C). Never A-to-A or B-to-B, extension cables (male to female) of any type, A, B or C, are not allowed either.
USB was specifically designed like this so you can never connect a device to a device or a host to a host.
On the host side, you pretty much only see full size USB-A ports. On the device side there are 3 common types of USB-B ports: standard size (you can for example see these on printers and scanners), mini-USB-B used a lot on older phones, and later micro-USB-B. On each side the male part is on the cable, the female part is on the host or device.
They do exist, despite the USB standards not allowing them
They shouldn't exist but don't mean they don't when you get the cheapest little devices you can find
They do exist, despite the USB standards not allowing them
A USB cable is a cable that conforms to the USB specification. If a cable does not conform to the USB specification then it isnโt an USB cable by definition
Iโm not saying a cable with 2 USB-A style connectors doesnโt exist, Iโm just saying that it is not a USB cable. Just like a glass of Pepsi is not a glass of Coca-Cola even though it may look like one.
I used to have a portable hard drive that had a usb-A/ e-sata hybrid connector and I had to use a USB A to A cable (or e-data) to use it.
Get 2 laptops, put them side by side with usb ports wide open and plug them bitches together. Likely will short with 5v being fed both sides.
But in reality its a usb coupler (plugging together 2x usb extension cables). Not a great lot of use from them in my opinion. I've seen shit bodged together in low budget it offices using edge case crap like this.
It's an Usb-A gender changer. It's not that useful but you could use it to turn an otg adapter (female usb-a to male usb-c) into a regular usb-c cable. I'd rather buy a usb-c cable though.
Ass-to-ass.
Docking
Many cheapo sata connectors need a cable like this(I use a male A to female micro b and then a female micro b to male A, it gets the job done)
But connector, idk
Not one that short but I do have A to A cord like that in use. In my case it's with a KVM that I lost and AC adapter for but found that if I plugged in to one of the rear console connections it could get it to power on from the USB device. Cable it to a USB charging port on the front of one of the UPS and away it goes.
Causing fires
I actually have a APC UPS at work that uses a USB-A to USB-A cable. You can look up the cable online, it's part number 940-0504. I was surprised APC used such a cable. I think if you tried to do something dumb like connect two PCs together with it, one of the USB ports would fry.
pretty sure i tried it as a kid and nothing happened.
I would definitely find a couple use cases for these
Angering the USB-IF
So your pets can't chew the hard-disk cables.
Unless you have a pet rabbit.
Finally! USB Direct Connect!
The way these are called male and female has always been so wild
Itโs a pretty good metaphor Iโd say and less bland than calling them plug and socket.
Don't know what to tell you, people just kinda tend to be horny.
I have a cheap HDMI capture device that takes in video input, exposes it to the computer as a regular webcam, and then outputs it back to HDMI. It gets the job done.
It uses an USB male to male for power, and a regular one for data.
That said, not sure how a short one like that would help.
I had an old Medion digital camera that used USB-A - USB-A cable for synching with PC.
This could be a shorter version of it, tho idk why would anyone use this for thus purpose, would be awkward
So you have 2 USBC devices you want to connect together, a laptop and a phone for example, but for some reason you can't find your USBC to USBC cable but you do have 2 USBC to USBA cables.
Well by breaking the USB specifications you can connect the 2 cables together to make a janky USBC to USBC cable.
Alternatively you can get single circuit boards with USBA ports on them and you can use this jank of an adaptor to link them together.
Don't think of it as a tiny cable, think of it as a gender bender. You can put on the end of some female cable.
You're more likely to see dongles like this at fixed installations. Like somebody puts a USB port into a wall, like a speaker's podium, or a presentation stand. So one side is fixed, depending on what you want to hook up to it, you might need to have a gender bender.
Is the cable considered transgender after that ?
USB is bi-directional. So it really doesn't care about the plug gender. Some other protocols are directional, then the plug gender is very important, so adapters for directional protocols tend to be more expensive, it may even require external power.
Once USB on the go was invented it cease to matter at all.
Today I learnt my sexuality is USB
Universal Sexual Bus?
What your describing sounds more like a double ended dildo
As long as the double ended dildo provided low impedance electrical through ways, and distinct electrical paths for at least four conduits, with minimal capacitive cross talk... then yes
I like you and your style. Do not let a stupid dirty joke get in the way of proper electrical and data connections. It tells me where your priorities are and I respect that.
I prefer to only have the two power contacts connected if you're going to do it with a device you don't know; use protection people.
Isn't that just a gender bender for women? Now we just need a double ended fleshlight for equality... And no I'm not going to google that!
Ass to ass
The stars of username, comment and upvotes
I want to upvote but I cant.
Have you never just wanted to plug 2 PCs into each other back to back?
Ass to ass as it were
))><((
$ $ $ $ $ $ $
I'm so happy people still know this movie.
Back and forth, forever.
It turn@ a usb extension cable into a regular usb
I guess that could be a use case?
Or turn 2 extension cords into a long one.
But a serious answer is that these are sometimes sold in a kit of adapters that would let you change the head. Most kits like used a normal cord as the base cord, but some used USB extension cords as the base cord. So this is meant to be a replacement part, not useful in its own right.
wouldn't that just make this thing longer? we'd still have the same problem
There are female-female USB extension cables. As to why those exist...
They are good for wifi/bt/radio usb receivers used for keyboard/mouse/gamepads...so they can be in a better place like higher or further.
Those still need to get plugged in to the device somehow lol
Yeah.... honestly somehow I missed the female-female part ๐ I thought it was male-female.
Well then it's used in combination with a male male for sure otherwise yeah O don't see any use unless there is some weird device with male input.
If you think about it, this is the USB equivalent of a double ended dildo
does this mean there's also double ended flesh lights?
Isn't that the nickname of your mum?
Such A-to-A adaptors and cables always have been prohibited by the USB spec, but people built them anyway. A common usecase for "illegal" A-A cables i remember was connecting PCIe cards (especially GPUs and mining cards) externally to riser sockets.
I have an external 3,5โ HDD enclosure that needs a male to male USB 3.0 A cable to plug into a PC. Still wondering, why they didnโt use Bโฆ
That's really odd. Why use a host connector when a client connector is intended for the purpose.
Did they entirely miss the purpose of USB?
Cost? A USB-A 3.0 connector is probably a few cents cheaper than a B 3.0 connector
Yeah, it must be that.
I bought a breadboard power supply and the options to feed it power are a barrel jack and usb-a. Considering the size of the thing mini or micro would have made way more sense.
The ones I have go trough the onboard voltage regulator and you can use them to power USB-devices. I suppose they've skipped diodes and other protective components so it can feed back to the circuit, but I haven't tested that.
I have a similar caddy. Many years old now. The connection to the host computer is a USB-A female, so connecting it requires a male to male cable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go
In 2001 the directionality became kind of moot. Especially if you want to do attach something with an on-the-go host
An OTG setup needs all 5 pins of the micro-B connector. USB A cannot be used for OTG. If a USB-A port can act as a client, that's not OTG, it's a botched implementation.
Technically, yes... but life finds a way https://pinoutguide.com/PortableDevices/usb_otg_pinout.shtml
Iโve used them for extension, as it allows you to attach a second, regular USB cable to it.
Well, what do you mean by "regular"? The cable would need to be female on at least one end, which I usually see in... USB extension cables.
Not that you probably need to know this, but for some other stranger: there's a max functional length to USB cables. At work I remember pulling my hair out troubleshooting a printer until we swapped cables for something shorter.
And that max length goes down with each coupling.
We have smart boards in most classrooms, but in an entire wing of my department the smart board doesn't work. Reason? When we built the wing, 8 or 10 years ago, the installers fitted their own low grade plugs on the USB connection for the boards, before figuring out that they snipped the cables too short. Instead of running new cabling the installers then introduced another extension.
Nobody cared to check it out before accepting delivery and my complaints went unheard by management, until it was too late to RMA it.
That said, there are "active" USB extension cables which draw current from the power lines and use it to boost the signal along the data lines
Meanwhile I have 25ft cables running my large format vinyl printers lol
My large format vinyl printer uses Ethernet. TIL there are USB vinyl printers. What kind of printer do you have? Latex 260 here
We had a 53" US Cutter and it attached to the computer by USB. If we're talking about the same thing.
He said printer though that's what's what threw me off. That's a cutter. My bad I thought he was talking about a USB large format printer, I only replied because I'm looking for a slightly smaller printer for my smaller decals, and I'd be interested in a serial or USB printer.
My PC is in the basement and I've got USB and serial going everywhere running different cutters, 3d printers, CNC, etc upstairs and down, also in the garage. Works great.
Sometimes you have a female to female cable.
You ever watch Requiem For A Dream?
ASSSSSSS TO ASSSSSSSS
Say gex
gex
haha, gross
Hey gexy
Gex 3D: Enter the Gecko
LUSBian sex obviously!
I dunno but it bothers me how much plastic wrapping that fucking thing apparently needs.
To connect two USB-A ports.
Basically the same as a USB-A to USB-A cable, just really short.
USB-A to USB-A cables do not exist, the USB standard does not allow them, if you have a cable with two USB-A connectors then itโs not actually a certified USB cable. The same goes for USB extension cables and this adapter. Note how there isnโt a โUSB certifiedโ logo on the package.
The cables exist; they just don't follow the standard. I've used them when developing consumer electronics: the host controller on the device switches to device mode in the bootloader, allowing a host machine to connect and debug/flash the device.
wtf are you talking about, of course they do.
They meant cables in spec with the USB specification at the time usb-a was new.
Now with usb-c, it's kinda moot, as most cables are male to male anyway.. of course that means we're more likely to see USB-C female to female adopters now
USB-C female to female adapters also are out of spec. The USB standard does not allow for extensions. USB cables only have male connectors (with the exception of USB-OTG dongles).
Show me where in the USB standards these are specified.
This is like saying that a building isn't a building if it's not up to code
Or like saying usb-a to usb-c adapters don't exist because they're not part of the standard but we all have like six of those damn things even though we've never actually bought a single one.
But those are actually part of the standard.
Are they? Everything I can find seems to say they aren't.
I remember when the first usb-c Macbooks hit stores Apple didn't have usb-a to c adapters for sale because they weren't in spec, a lot of reviews mentioned that.
You can find compliance requirements in the document linked here: https://www.usb.org/document-library/usb-type-c-connectors-and-cable-assemblies-compliance-document
You want to look at table 3-6 for requirements for USB-C to legacy USB adapters.
They cables and exist and they work. So being "specified" doesn't mean jack shit.
They might sometimes work. They arenโt guaranteed to work.
USB-A to USB-A cables do exist.
I have seen many (very cheap) peripherals use USB-A sockets. I figure those sockets must be a few cents cheaper than alternatives.
And there was a USB certified logo on these cables and devices?
China stuff loves to slap logos on there that do not apply, so probably without having seen this particular abomination myself. Fake CE markings are super common though.
*looks at old charger from an American device*
HOLY SHIT A CRYPTID CALL SCP
Thatโs not a USB charger.
HOLY SHIT AN UNIDENTIFIED CRYPTID CALL SCOOBYDOO!
Itโs not hard to imagine a product that would require one, though. Itโs how every phone charging cable works, just with a different size male USB on one end.
No, it's exactly not how every phone charging cable works, at least not for non USB-C cables.
Pre-USB-C cables are explicitly unidirectional. In USB there are 'hosts' (usually computers) and 'devices' (flashdrives, camera's, mice, keyboards, etc.). The host side always has a female USB-A connector, a device either has a female USB-B connector (if it's intended to be used with a cable), or a male USB-A (if it's intended to be plugged in directly into a host, like a flash drive). A real, standard-conformant USB cable can only go from USB-A male to USB-B male (with the addition of USB-C, it can also go from A-to-C, from C-to-B, or C-to-C). Never A-to-A or B-to-B, extension cables (male to female) of any type, A, B or C, are not allowed either.
USB was specifically designed like this so you can never connect a device to a device or a host to a host.
On the host side, you pretty much only see full size USB-A ports. On the device side there are 3 common types of USB-B ports: standard size (you can for example see these on printers and scanners), mini-USB-B used a lot on older phones, and later micro-USB-B. On each side the male part is on the cable, the female part is on the host or device.
They do exist, despite the USB standards not allowing them
See: cheapo video capture card for work, other side is just HDMI-IN and OUT
They shouldn't exist but don't mean they don't when you get the cheapest little devices you can find
A USB cable is a cable that conforms to the USB specification. If a cable does not conform to the USB specification then it isnโt an USB cable by definition
Iโm not saying a cable with 2 USB-A style connectors doesnโt exist, Iโm just saying that it is not a USB cable. Just like a glass of Pepsi is not a glass of Coca-Cola even though it may look like one.
I used to have a portable hard drive that had a usb-A/ e-sata hybrid connector and I had to use a USB A to A cable (or e-data) to use it.
Get 2 laptops, put them side by side with usb ports wide open and plug them bitches together. Likely will short with 5v being fed both sides.
But in reality its a usb coupler (plugging together 2x usb extension cables). Not a great lot of use from them in my opinion. I've seen shit bodged together in low budget it offices using edge case crap like this.
It's an Usb-A gender changer. It's not that useful but you could use it to turn an otg adapter (female usb-a to male usb-c) into a regular usb-c cable. I'd rather buy a usb-c cable though.
Ass-to-ass.
Docking
Many cheapo sata connectors need a cable like this(I use a male A to female micro b and then a female micro b to male A, it gets the job done)
But connector, idk
Not one that short but I do have A to A cord like that in use. In my case it's with a KVM that I lost and AC adapter for but found that if I plugged in to one of the rear console connections it could get it to power on from the USB device. Cable it to a USB charging port on the front of one of the UPS and away it goes.
Causing fires
I actually have a APC UPS at work that uses a USB-A to USB-A cable. You can look up the cable online, it's part number 940-0504. I was surprised APC used such a cable. I think if you tried to do something dumb like connect two PCs together with it, one of the USB ports would fry.
pretty sure i tried it as a kid and nothing happened.
I would definitely find a couple use cases for these
Angering the USB-IF
So your pets can't chew the hard-disk cables.
Unless you have a pet rabbit.
Finally! USB Direct Connect!
The way these are called male and female has always been so wild
Itโs a pretty good metaphor Iโd say and less bland than calling them plug and socket.
Don't know what to tell you, people just kinda tend to be horny.
I have a cheap HDMI capture device that takes in video input, exposes it to the computer as a regular webcam, and then outputs it back to HDMI. It gets the job done.
It uses an USB male to male for power, and a regular one for data.
That said, not sure how a short one like that would help.
I had an old Medion digital camera that used USB-A - USB-A cable for synching with PC.
This could be a shorter version of it, tho idk why would anyone use this for thus purpose, would be awkward
So you have 2 USBC devices you want to connect together, a laptop and a phone for example, but for some reason you can't find your USBC to USBC cable but you do have 2 USBC to USBA cables.
Well by breaking the USB specifications you can connect the 2 cables together to make a janky USBC to USBC cable.
Alternatively you can get single circuit boards with USBA ports on them and you can use this jank of an adaptor to link them together.