USB-A is not dead.
8Today, I received a brand-new EBL-brand NiMH AAA-cells-and-charger package that I bought online. It’s not a discontinued model; they still make it. The USB port to power the charger is USB-C. The supplied cable is USB-A. “Okay,” I think to myself, “they think more people are likely to have a charger with an A port than a C port.” So I set the cable aside, pick up the C-to-C cable that’s currently plugged into the GaN charger that can bring my phone up by as much as 40% while I make lunch, and start slotting the cells in.
Nothing happens.
Huh.
Look closely at the cell cavities in the charger; did I put them in backwards? Nope.
Unplug the cable from the battery charger and plug it into my phone. Screen brightens, “Charging rapidly.” More huh.
Plug in the USB-C cable that’s connected via USB-A to my PC: All the little LEDs come on, pulsing under the meager power provided.
Oh for crying out loud.
Fire up the Treedix cable tester; check the EBL A-to-C cable. The only live connection is Power. No data. Try three more A-to-C; they all work. Try two more C-to-C connected to a different port on the same brick: No bueno. Try a C-to-C cable using an A-to-C adapter at the brick end: it works. WTAFO?
I do not recall encountering this previously. I have two other devices that absolutely will not charge without a C-to-C cable that’s plugged into a C power port, but this is the first that insists upon A-to-C.
I figured that I would toss this out there as a heads-up to keep at least one A-port power brick around just in case you run into the same thing I just hit. It can happen.
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Yeah, the charger probably is missing required resistors. Here is a hackaday article that talks all about the required resistors for usb c power: https://hackaday.com/2023/01/04/all-about-usb-c-resistors-and-emarkers/. Specifically, “If you plug a device that doesn’t make a pulldown accessible through the CC wire in the cable, your device will never get power from a USB-C port, and would only work with a USB-A to USB-C cable.”
Personally, I would return it for being non-compliant and defective according to the usb-c spec. If they are too cheap to add sub penny resistors and a little pcb work, then what other things could be defective with it?
@zstrout It was cheap enough that I might just go all Big Clive on it instead. But first, Ima charge these cells.
@werehatrack @zstrout
since it came with the correct cables I’m not sure you can really bitch that it is non compliant.
@zstrout Rats. They appear to have had a special C socket made for them with only two traces plus a shell ground. There’s nothing inside to hook into and add the resistor.
@chienfou They almost certainly marketed it as USB c chargeable. Why would they use a USB c jack if they did not market it this way? They could have used a barrel jack which is probably cheaper and a whole lot more honest. If you can’t charge it with a USB c to USB c cable, then it is not really usb c chargeable. USB c is not just the physical connector; it is the electrical connections and resistor requirements too. So beyond being non-compliant, it is probably false marketing too, but I don’t actually know that since I don’t know what listing it was.
@zstrout
Actually there is some discussion that USB-C is, in fact, just the connector shape.
That being said though, you’re correct. It does seem disingenuous to list it as USB-C chargable, If that was in fact done.
@chienfou @zstrout The specifications given in the listings for it everywhere that I’ve checked do not claim that it is USB C chargeable. It just says that it includes a cord, and the illustrations show that the cord is USB A. On the one hand, putting a C-shaped socket (note that I did not say port) on the device and then not enabling the use of a regular C to C cable does seem a trifle disingenuous, but given how many people pitch a screaming fit if the socket is micro, there’s a certain amount of “we can’t win” involved. By far the smarter move would have been to have put a real C charging port in there, which would have meant that the buyer could use whatever they wanted to charge it with. I might send them some feedback to that effect. This is not the only charger they sell, and I don’t know what standards, or lack of them, the others meet.
@werehatrack @zstrout
Makes sense.
The nearly ubiquitous nature of USB-A wall warts ensures that you’d be able to use “something” to charge your device even if you lost the cable supplied. If worse came to worse a trip to the Dollar tree would solve your problem. Using a USB-A to barrel plug means you have to be super careful about what the hell you do with that cable. Or, at even more production expense, keep up with the power brick and permanently attached cable that came with the device.
While NOT the most elegant solution, I can see the practicality of it.
Just popped in to comment on the AI-generated header image. How cool is that?
USB-A alive. Yes!
But …
/youtube Timothy Leary’s dead song
In researching the ramifications of this, I decided to test all of the USB cables within reach. (I may expand this to the rest of the house later.) Some surprises turned up. A couple of C-to-C cables were asymmetric; only one of the CC channels was connected on each. And several C-to-C cables did not support USB3.x at all; they were USB2.0.
So, not only is USB-A not dead, but USB-C sometimes isn’t what one might reasonably expect.
@werehatrack The unknown specs of USB-C cables is the worst part. I am starting to get enough of them that I need to get a tester and lable them.
@yakkoTDI I excavated a Pile Of Stuff™ next to the desk and found 11 more USB cables. EIGHT of them were power-only. Over half were A-to-C and the rest were A-to-Micro. Those are all in e-waste now.
Given the frustration that happens when I try to use a power-only cable for data, I have concluded that the Treedix cable tester has paid for itself in terms of saved sanity already.
@werehatrack @yakkoTDI Guess I have a something new to be on the lookout for!
(I’d just label the “charging only” cables and set those aside for such use, however. They’re still usable for such, at least.)
@narfcake @werehatrack @yakkoTDI
At least theoretically, USB-A cables that are power only should NOT have the USB symbol on them on the plug.
@chienfou @narfcake @yakkoTDI Sadly, the absence of the USB symbol does not guarantee that the cable is power-only. At this point, I’ve concluded that “USB-shaped cable and socket” is a category unto itself that has further destandardized something that was pretty much guaranteed to devolve into chaos anyway.
@chienfou @werehatrack @yakkoTDI
https://xkcd.com/1892/
Also:
https://xkcd.com/927/
@werehatrack
Conversely, in your experience, does the PRESENCE of a USB symbol guarantee that it carries data… however slowly?
@chienfou You just caused another pass through the pile of cables to my left. One has a lightning bolt in a circle on the USB-A end, and the plastic tongue inside that connector is orange; I assume it’s PD-capable or something of that nature. Another is much heavier, C-to-C, and has a printed symbol on each end that looks sort of like a cartoon head profile with just an eye and an open mouth. The tester says it has some peculiarities, but supports USB3. A white Y cable that’s A-to-two-Micro has a USB symbol but is power-only, so the answer to your question appears to be “no”. Testing ceased with the disproof confirmation. (The white Y cable was from a Meh deal, BTW. It is the charging cable that came with a pair of itty-bitty barrel-shaped Bluetooth speakers.) (Somewhere, I have some A-to-four-C hydra cables which I haven’t tested, but it would be ludicrous for them to support data. They came with four-packs of rechargeable lithium-regulated-to-1.55V AA batteries that have a C charging socket on the side of their positive end.)
@narfcake xkcd is full of gems.
@werehatrack
/giphy curioser and curioser
@werehatrack
I have those same speakers (Sound Babiez…from a mehrathon) by the way. They’re my go-to travel speakers, especially if I’m traveling (cheap) on Frontier/Spirit and don’t have luggage allowance.
And in a Big Clive moment a few minutes ago, a parcel arrived from Ali Express with a pair of impressively powerful UV flashlights inside. So I took them to the "stuff Charges here area and plugged in the handiest USB-C cables I could find. One of them lit up its charging indicator. The other did not. The one which didn’t start to charge was connected via C-to-C. I swapped it to an A-to-C cable on the same brick, and the charging indicators illuminated immediately.
Apparently the “charging cable socket that only works with A-to-C cables” is more common than I had already discovered.