3 ms·

The standard is let's say not so well thought out. You can still kill your computer by plugging in wrong USB-C.

by bitL 9y ago

jsjohnst 9y ago
I get the point you are trying to make, but there’s a lot of things besides just USB that are susceptible to frying your hardware. The root cause is shitty manufacturing, there’s almost nothing practical the laptop can do to prevent a badly built device from doing at least some kind of damage.
- leetcrew 9y ago
  sure, but manufacturers seem to be uncommonly bad at implementing the new USB 3.x specs, power delivery in particular. the majority of USB-C cables on sale violate the power delivery spec in important ways.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    I haven’t seen or heard of a USB-PD cable issue outside of cheap Chinese knockoff crap. Have you?
    - leetcrew 9y ago
      just going off my memory of this spreadsheet [1]. [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQaXK1dl8I91V4-eP_sfNVNzbA/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQa...
Dylan16807 9y ago
You can kill almost any computer if you plug in a power cable that switched hot and ground. That's not a fault of USB-C. It's completely unrelated to the subtleties with resistor marking. Edit: Why the downvotes? Was there any issue with killing computers outside that one batch of backwards cables? Seriously, if a power cable is 100% backwards that's got nothing to do with any standard.
- leetcrew 9y ago
  the downvotes are probably because it's not usually a polarity issue. the most common issues are with current/voltage negotiations between the charger and device. when this isn't implemented correctly, either the cable or the charger itself (maybe even the device, idk) can erroneously negotiate a power level that is too great for the circuitry to withstand. you're right that it's not exactly the fault of the USB-C spec, but at the same time, manufacturers would probably not mess it up so much if it were not so complex.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    Chargers already need to be able to handle phones that pull arbitrary amounts of current, or they will fry on non-C cables too. Other than test-and-see, the negotiation is done with data packets, and a bad cable can't cause anything to go wrong. There is nothing that both fries devices and is the fault of USB-C. The million cables that have the wrong resistor don't make things worse than they already were pre-USB-C.

The standard is let's say not so well thought out. You can still kill your computer by plugging in wrong USB-C.

by bitL 9y ago

The standard is let's say not so well thought out. You can still kill your computer by plugging in wrong USB-C.

I get the point you are trying to make, but there’s a lot of things besides just USB that are susceptible to frying your hardware. The root cause is shitty manufacturing, there’s almost nothing practical the laptop can do to prevent a badly built device from doing at least some kind of damage.

leetcrew 9y ago
sure, but manufacturers seem to be uncommonly bad at implementing the new USB 3.x specs, power delivery in particular. the majority of USB-C cables on sale violate the power delivery spec in important ways.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  I haven’t seen or heard of a USB-PD cable issue outside of cheap Chinese knockoff crap. Have you?
  - leetcrew 9y ago
    just going off my memory of this spreadsheet [1]. [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQaXK1dl8I91V4-eP_sfNVNzbA/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQa...

Dylan16807 9y ago

You can kill almost any computer if you plug in a power cable that switched hot and ground. That's not a fault of USB-C. It's completely unrelated to the subtleties with resistor marking. Edit: Why the downvotes? Was there any issue with killing computers outside that one batch of backwards cables? Seriously, if a power cable is 100% backwards that's got nothing to do with any standard.

leetcrew 9y ago
the downvotes are probably because it's not usually a polarity issue. the most common issues are with current/voltage negotiations between the charger and device. when this isn't implemented correctly, either the cable or the charger itself (maybe even the device, idk) can erroneously negotiate a power level that is too great for the circuitry to withstand. you're right that it's not exactly the fault of the USB-C spec, but at the same time, manufacturers would probably not mess it up so much if it were not so complex.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  Chargers already need to be able to handle phones that pull arbitrary amounts of current, or they will fry on non-C cables too. Other than test-and-see, the negotiation is done with data packets, and a bad cable can't cause anything to go wrong. There is nothing that both fries devices and is the fault of USB-C. The million cables that have the wrong resistor don't make things worse than they already were pre-USB-C.