7 ms·

Why did they have to use a micro HDMI port? Couldn't they have done dual USB-C and made one the DisplayPort output? MicroHDMI is not a very nice connector, it's

Why did they have to use a micro HDMI port? Couldn't they have done dual USB-C and made one the DisplayPort output? MicroHDMI is not a very nice connector, it's a lot of pins under mechanical stress from the heavy, rigid HDMI people generally attach to it.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
DisplayPort has the huge advantage of being incredibly easy to passively convert into the ultra-legacy-weird-difficult HDMI, where-as the legacy-centric-pita-gross HDMI requires active absurd adapters to turn into DisplayPort. 100% more usb-c please, with alt modes. USB4 mandates every port be able to do DisplayPort output. I really hope we start to see phones and tablets which have >1 USB port. Lenovo has an absurd beast phone, a Legion phone, with both dual batteries and dual USB-c (USB3) ports. If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Hopefully happens sooner, and hopefully we see dual ports emerge midway to then too. Would be such a great capability set.
- afavour 3y ago
  > If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Why? That’s an incredibly minor use case. If you’re expecting something this niche to become the norm then you’re destined to be disappointed.
  - mcny 3y ago
    We had USB 3 with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 in September 2013. It is now almost a decade. If rumors are true, Samsung will announce a USB 4 (thunderbolt 3) phone before the end of 2024. I agree with the grandparent. While most people don't care too much for eGPU (?), I'm sure if we let people innovate, good things will come. My dream is much smaller. I just want whatever hardware circuitry is required to accomplish the scenario where a phone that is plugged in to a good power source runs directly from the wall, shutting off battery charge completely, not trickle charging all day and night.
    - eternityforest 3y ago
      Pretty sure most any phone already has the hardware for software defined charging. Android just doesn't have an API call for it, unless they do and I just haven't heard yet. Maybe we should be filing feature requests for it;
    - RF_Savage 3y ago
      One of the tragedies of USB-C is how it can be anything from dumb charging only to one's capable of 40GB/s data transfer among everything else.
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        This. People can get away with implementing really, really bad USB-C ports and you're just supposed to expect that no two USB-C ports are born equal.
      - hgomersall 3y ago
        It makes working out which hole to plug something in to rather tricky. Especially when the little lightning bolt or other graphics have rubbed off.
        lproven 3y ago
        Seconded. And even before then. I have an M1 Macbook Air which will only output video over one of its 2 USB-C ports, not the other. There is nothing visible on the case or in the OS to indicate this. I have had an Arm and an AMD Thinkpad which both have only dual USB-C, and both unpredictably switch between one or the other being bootable, with no discenable pattern.
        lloeki 3y ago
        > I have an M1 Macbook Air which will only output video over one of its 2 USB-C ports, not the other. Weird, ever since I had USB-C based Mac Mini or MacBook (two Intel, two M1) they could reliably output video on any of the two, three, or four ports (as long as I don't go past the limit). They're essentially symmetric on all features.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    You may be onto something, as Lenovo shut down the super-badass ultra-phone. https://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-legion-phone-shutdown-3306942/ https://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-legion-phone-shutdow... But reciprocally, what's the new ultra-hot device? Gaming decks. Lenovo just announced theirs today. Steam, Asus, and dozen of others have amazing devices. And there are still gaming-centric phones galore. This should be an easy ask. It should be a lock. Android alas is kind of a weird divergent hard to use OS that makes everything difficult. Apple hasn't supported anyone elses GPUs in a long long time. But in general, this should just be easy simple & doable, were it not for the sins of these ultra-bizarre weird not-PC but so close systems. ChromeOS finally found jesus & is now running on Wayland, because it was obviously the correct & only sensible choice all along, And has huge advantages, such as having a huge world of people optimizing & making the system better. I don't know how Android ever pivots (they just steal everything ChromeOS (which runs Android great) is doing), but it should, so that it can make ideas like this unimaginably easy & simple tasks, versus today where this sort of idea is a painstaking slow & awful endeavor to make happen. So much of computing is a story of niche finding leverage & finding adherents. The early adopters are just those who see potential, and they continually have reshaped what computing is. Writing off "niche" as uninteresting & minor ignores how sensible & clear & obvious so many advancements are & should be.
    - eternityforest 3y ago
      I wish Android and Linux would just merge. Give people access to a Linux userland that lets you install Nix packages(Most anything but Nix or similar would be a step backwards from Android's reliability during updates), and then Android could very easily be most people's only OS. If people could plug in their phone and run Linux apps on a full size monitor they'd probably pay a lot more for the phone, knowing they didn't then also need a nice laptop.
      - pmontra 3y ago
        The general population only need to run a browser on their external monitor, with Office 365 or Google Docs and Gmail. There is no need for anything else. If one is not a software developer, which Linux apps do you feel are needed? I used Samsung DEX a few times on my tablet. The mouse plus touchscreen combination works well. The keyboard is a little worse because there is no Esc key on Android and Ctrl [ is uncomfortable.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    Because that’s what standards are for : a single base of universal rules that allows you to build what you want over it. The point is not that phones should be connected to GPUs, that’s a silly idea. But nevertheless for plenty of reasons including ecology and autonomy of people, it should be the case that any device should work with any other device as long as anyone is able to develop a driver. And there should be no permanent lock against custom drivers.
- nimish 3y ago
  DP can only be passively converted to HDMI if the source uses DisplayPort++/Dual Mode, which is not supported by the DisplayPort Alt Mode over USB-C spec (Why? Who knows). Every usb-c to HDMI adapter has to actively convert the signals which is why one end is usually much larger than the other.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    Isn't there not enough pins for that? Plus, it would just be needless extra hassle, when their goal is to just not have HDMI at all eventually.
- yyyk 3y ago
  >I really hope we start to see phones and tablets which have >1 USB port We're much more likely to get phones with 0 USB ports (justified by 'security', 'water proofness' or 'simplicity') where the only charging is wireless.
paxys 3y ago
And it already has dual USB-C, just without video out support. Pretty disappointing.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  I also scrolled down to look for this (in the market for a low-power long-lasting laptop that will be 99% docked). I might get one anyway, if they ship to SA. At least micro HMDI is still dockable. (Just out of curiosity - does anyone know of any other option to use an external display with this tablet? Are wireless displays a thing?)
- chx 3y ago
  It has DP alt mode support you need to click the big + on https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification next to connectivity
smcleod 3y ago
I haven't seen one of those in many many years! I wish HDMI in general would die and let displayport take it place.
- karmakaze 3y ago
  What's the practical difference? With USB-C there's power delivery. DisplayPort has..?
  - smcleod 3y ago
    USB-C is the connector / cable, DisplayPort is one protocol that can run within such a cable. HDMI (a proprietary licensed protocol) can also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Comparison_with_HDMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Comparison_with_HD...
  - chx 3y ago
    DisplayPort has MST.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    > DisplayPort has..? Consistently good colors. Sometimes even PC monitors won't negotiate properly with the PC and start displaying washed out colors. IIRC this had to be forced on a Raspberry Pi on the PI side. Not all monitors can be adjusted. Consistently no under/overscan. For some reason, the TVs we had in conference rooms figured it would be smart to cut the borders of the image and zoom in, so you get missing bits and whatever's left is a blurry mess. For the TV situation, you usually don't have a full remote to adjust it, if it even supports that. You often don't have time to look up things in the TV's typically crappy menu system. I've usually found the option to disable over scan, but using full-range RGB seems less common. Also, HDMI seems to lag DisplayPort capabilities when it comes to higher resolutions and refresh rates. When my 2013 MBP came out, it could drive a 4k@60 screen over DP. HDMI required the 2.0 version to do that, which, IIRC, came much later.
    - ThatPlayer 3y ago
MichaelZuo 3y ago
Probably due to cheapening out a few dollars on the BOM, not a great sign to be honest.
- chx 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823
  - askbookz1 3y ago
    doesn't explain the mini hdmi port
- mike_hock 3y ago
  But not cheaping out on pixels that you can't even see with a magnifying glass. 1920p on 12.5 inches, lol.
RF_Savage 3y ago
USB-C DisplayPort altmode would have required one to two extra chips for the port supporting it and some extra routing on the PCB. So cost and complexity increase. MicroHDMI does suck, but despite that raspberry pi 4 has two of them.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  The Pi also put a nasty old microUSB on the Pi Pico so I'm not surprised they used a crappy connector, when there's way less reason to still use MicroUSB. They're a great company but MicroUSB? Really?
  - RF_Savage 3y ago
    At the time Pi Pico came out MicroUSB connectors were around ten times cheaper than USB-C. Now it has dropped to 2 - 4 times cheaper. In volume those differences do matter.
- chx 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823
ryantse 3y ago
From <https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification>: Micro HDMI USB Type C 3.2 with Power Delivery 3.0 USB Type C 3.2 with Power Delivery 3.0 Micro SD Memory Card Reader 3.5mm Headphone Jack HDMI version: 2.0 USB-C Interface: Display Port (DP Alt Mode) USB version: 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps) Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to have Display Port for their USB-C?
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Oh nice! That makes it a lot more interesting
- predictabl3 3y ago
  It's very odd that their 12-port dock also shows a DP port in the image, but it's not listed in the specs. But the 2x HDMI are visible + listed. :(
chx 3y ago
Click the big plus on https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification next to connectivity to see > USB-C Interface: Display Port (DP Alt Mode)
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  There's 2 USB-C ports but it's worded so that possibly only 1 port could support DP out. So even considering just the USB-C ports, there is a likelihood they cheaped out somewhat. Did you assume it definitely will support DP out for both?
dheera 3y ago
USB-C is equally bad. I really wish they would have the rubber housing of the USB-C go inside the case like an IEC power connector. I break about a USB-C cable every week. Broke one today just by putting it in my backpack while connected to a power brick. Power bricks of the 1990s didn't have this problem. The barrel connectors were almost indestructible. You could drop bricks on VGA connectors and they'd still work.
- lproven 3y ago
  Wow. I have never yet broken a USB-C cable. Not one. When I used an iPhone for a couple of years, I went through approximately a Lightning cable per month, sometimes more. At one point I took a carrier bag of broken Lightning cables to the electronics recycling. You must treat equipment exceptionally roughly.
  - lloeki 3y ago
    I am full USB-C. I have a kid. Mine are treated very roughly. Not a single one ever broke. Comparatively, microusb has died on me quite a lot from regular usage, and always on the device side, which is so much worse. (Now the cat chewing on cables in another matter xD)
  - kimbernator 3y ago
    Yeah, I've never once seen a USB-C cable break in that the physical connector itself was damaged. I've been through plenty that just seem to stop reliably connecting if they are in high-motion environments (the cable connecting my phone to my car's entertainment system, for instance) I will say that I really wish they had managed to not have that middle section sticking up in the female connectors - cleaning out my phone's USB-C port is about 20x harder than cleaning out a lighting port because I feel like I'm going to break that little thing in the middle.
  - dheera 3y ago
    No, I treat equipment as any consumer would. Like if my phone is low on battery I plug it into a portable battery and shove the phone and portable battery (connected by a USB-C cable) into my pocket, like any consumer would. I then go hiking, snowshoeing, biking, sleeping, like any consumer would. Cables have bent and broken in my pocket in these scenarios, among thousands of others. My parent comment was yesterday; today's USB-C cable broke when it got stuck in an office chair's wheel caster, bending the sheet metal housing. Thi doesn't happen with ANY connector of the 1990s. BNC, RCA, DB-9, 1/8" headphone jacks, 5.5x2.5 barrel connectors, they ALL withstood office chair crushing and were all probably designed with consumer abuse like office chairs in mind. I've even run over DB-9 and BNC connectors with heavy duty carts, they were fine.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

DisplayPort has the huge advantage of being incredibly easy to passively convert into the ultra-legacy-weird-difficult HDMI, where-as the legacy-centric-pita-gross HDMI requires active absurd adapters to turn into DisplayPort. 100% more usb-c please, with alt modes. USB4 mandates every port be able to do DisplayPort output. I really hope we start to see phones and tablets which have >1 USB port. Lenovo has an absurd beast phone, a Legion phone, with both dual batteries and dual USB-c (USB3) ports. If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Hopefully happens sooner, and hopefully we see dual ports emerge midway to then too. Would be such a great capability set.

afavour 3y ago
> If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Why? That’s an incredibly minor use case. If you’re expecting something this niche to become the norm then you’re destined to be disappointed.
- mcny 3y ago
  We had USB 3 with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 in September 2013. It is now almost a decade. If rumors are true, Samsung will announce a USB 4 (thunderbolt 3) phone before the end of 2024. I agree with the grandparent. While most people don't care too much for eGPU (?), I'm sure if we let people innovate, good things will come. My dream is much smaller. I just want whatever hardware circuitry is required to accomplish the scenario where a phone that is plugged in to a good power source runs directly from the wall, shutting off battery charge completely, not trickle charging all day and night.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    Pretty sure most any phone already has the hardware for software defined charging. Android just doesn't have an API call for it, unless they do and I just haven't heard yet. Maybe we should be filing feature requests for it;
  - RF_Savage 3y ago
    One of the tragedies of USB-C is how it can be anything from dumb charging only to one's capable of 40GB/s data transfer among everything else.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      This. People can get away with implementing really, really bad USB-C ports and you're just supposed to expect that no two USB-C ports are born equal.
    - hgomersall 3y ago
      It makes working out which hole to plug something in to rather tricky. Especially when the little lightning bolt or other graphics have rubbed off.
      - lproven 3y ago
        Seconded. And even before then. I have an M1 Macbook Air which will only output video over one of its 2 USB-C ports, not the other. There is nothing visible on the case or in the OS to indicate this. I have had an Arm and an AMD Thinkpad which both have only dual USB-C, and both unpredictably switch between one or the other being bootable, with no discenable pattern.
        lloeki 3y ago
        > I have an M1 Macbook Air which will only output video over one of its 2 USB-C ports, not the other. Weird, ever since I had USB-C based Mac Mini or MacBook (two Intel, two M1) they could reliably output video on any of the two, three, or four ports (as long as I don't go past the limit). They're essentially symmetric on all features.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  You may be onto something, as Lenovo shut down the super-badass ultra-phone. https://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-legion-phone-shutdown-3306942/ https://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-legion-phone-shutdow... But reciprocally, what's the new ultra-hot device? Gaming decks. Lenovo just announced theirs today. Steam, Asus, and dozen of others have amazing devices. And there are still gaming-centric phones galore. This should be an easy ask. It should be a lock. Android alas is kind of a weird divergent hard to use OS that makes everything difficult. Apple hasn't supported anyone elses GPUs in a long long time. But in general, this should just be easy simple & doable, were it not for the sins of these ultra-bizarre weird not-PC but so close systems. ChromeOS finally found jesus & is now running on Wayland, because it was obviously the correct & only sensible choice all along, And has huge advantages, such as having a huge world of people optimizing & making the system better. I don't know how Android ever pivots (they just steal everything ChromeOS (which runs Android great) is doing), but it should, so that it can make ideas like this unimaginably easy & simple tasks, versus today where this sort of idea is a painstaking slow & awful endeavor to make happen. So much of computing is a story of niche finding leverage & finding adherents. The early adopters are just those who see potential, and they continually have reshaped what computing is. Writing off "niche" as uninteresting & minor ignores how sensible & clear & obvious so many advancements are & should be.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    I wish Android and Linux would just merge. Give people access to a Linux userland that lets you install Nix packages(Most anything but Nix or similar would be a step backwards from Android's reliability during updates), and then Android could very easily be most people's only OS. If people could plug in their phone and run Linux apps on a full size monitor they'd probably pay a lot more for the phone, knowing they didn't then also need a nice laptop.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      The general population only need to run a browser on their external monitor, with Office 365 or Google Docs and Gmail. There is no need for anything else. If one is not a software developer, which Linux apps do you feel are needed? I used Samsung DEX a few times on my tablet. The mouse plus touchscreen combination works well. The keyboard is a little worse because there is no Esc key on Android and Ctrl [ is uncomfortable.
- pjerem 3y ago
  Because that’s what standards are for : a single base of universal rules that allows you to build what you want over it. The point is not that phones should be connected to GPUs, that’s a silly idea. But nevertheless for plenty of reasons including ecology and autonomy of people, it should be the case that any device should work with any other device as long as anyone is able to develop a driver. And there should be no permanent lock against custom drivers.
nimish 3y ago
DP can only be passively converted to HDMI if the source uses DisplayPort++/Dual Mode, which is not supported by the DisplayPort Alt Mode over USB-C spec (Why? Who knows). Every usb-c to HDMI adapter has to actively convert the signals which is why one end is usually much larger than the other.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Isn't there not enough pins for that? Plus, it would just be needless extra hassle, when their goal is to just not have HDMI at all eventually.
yyyk 3y ago
>I really hope we start to see phones and tablets which have >1 USB port We're much more likely to get phones with 0 USB ports (justified by 'security', 'water proofness' or 'simplicity') where the only charging is wireless.

paxys 3y ago

And it already has dual USB-C, just without video out support. Pretty disappointing.

lelanthran 3y ago
I also scrolled down to look for this (in the market for a low-power long-lasting laptop that will be 99% docked). I might get one anyway, if they ship to SA. At least micro HMDI is still dockable. (Just out of curiosity - does anyone know of any other option to use an external display with this tablet? Are wireless displays a thing?)
chx 3y ago
It has DP alt mode support you need to click the big + on https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification next to connectivity

smcleod 3y ago

I haven't seen one of those in many many years! I wish HDMI in general would die and let displayport take it place.

karmakaze 3y ago
What's the practical difference? With USB-C there's power delivery. DisplayPort has..?
- smcleod 3y ago
  USB-C is the connector / cable, DisplayPort is one protocol that can run within such a cable. HDMI (a proprietary licensed protocol) can also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Comparison_with_HDMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Comparison_with_HD...
- chx 3y ago
  DisplayPort has MST.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  > DisplayPort has..? Consistently good colors. Sometimes even PC monitors won't negotiate properly with the PC and start displaying washed out colors. IIRC this had to be forced on a Raspberry Pi on the PI side. Not all monitors can be adjusted. Consistently no under/overscan. For some reason, the TVs we had in conference rooms figured it would be smart to cut the borders of the image and zoom in, so you get missing bits and whatever's left is a blurry mess. For the TV situation, you usually don't have a full remote to adjust it, if it even supports that. You often don't have time to look up things in the TV's typically crappy menu system. I've usually found the option to disable over scan, but using full-range RGB seems less common. Also, HDMI seems to lag DisplayPort capabilities when it comes to higher resolutions and refresh rates. When my 2013 MBP came out, it could drive a 4k@60 screen over DP. HDMI required the 2.0 version to do that, which, IIRC, came much later.
  - ThatPlayer 3y ago

MichaelZuo 3y ago

Probably due to cheapening out a few dollars on the BOM, not a great sign to be honest.

chx 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823
- askbookz1 3y ago
  doesn't explain the mini hdmi port
mike_hock 3y ago
But not cheaping out on pixels that you can't even see with a magnifying glass. 1920p on 12.5 inches, lol.

RF_Savage 3y ago

USB-C DisplayPort altmode would have required one to two extra chips for the port supporting it and some extra routing on the PCB. So cost and complexity increase. MicroHDMI does suck, but despite that raspberry pi 4 has two of them.

eternityforest 3y ago
The Pi also put a nasty old microUSB on the Pi Pico so I'm not surprised they used a crappy connector, when there's way less reason to still use MicroUSB. They're a great company but MicroUSB? Really?
- RF_Savage 3y ago
  At the time Pi Pico came out MicroUSB connectors were around ten times cheaper than USB-C. Now it has dropped to 2 - 4 times cheaper. In volume those differences do matter.
chx 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171823

ryantse 3y ago

From <https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification>: Micro HDMI USB Type C 3.2 with Power Delivery 3.0 USB Type C 3.2 with Power Delivery 3.0 Micro SD Memory Card Reader 3.5mm Headphone Jack HDMI version: 2.0 USB-C Interface: Display Port (DP Alt Mode) USB version: 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps) Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to have Display Port for their USB-C?

eternityforest 3y ago
Oh nice! That makes it a lot more interesting
predictabl3 3y ago
It's very odd that their 12-port dock also shows a DP port in the image, but it's not listed in the specs. But the 2x HDMI are visible + listed. :(

chx 3y ago

Click the big plus on https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification next to connectivity to see > USB-C Interface: Display Port (DP Alt Mode)

MichaelZuo 3y ago
There's 2 USB-C ports but it's worded so that possibly only 1 port could support DP out. So even considering just the USB-C ports, there is a likelihood they cheaped out somewhat. Did you assume it definitely will support DP out for both?

dheera 3y ago

USB-C is equally bad. I really wish they would have the rubber housing of the USB-C go inside the case like an IEC power connector. I break about a USB-C cable every week. Broke one today just by putting it in my backpack while connected to a power brick. Power bricks of the 1990s didn't have this problem. The barrel connectors were almost indestructible. You could drop bricks on VGA connectors and they'd still work.

lproven 3y ago
Wow. I have never yet broken a USB-C cable. Not one. When I used an iPhone for a couple of years, I went through approximately a Lightning cable per month, sometimes more. At one point I took a carrier bag of broken Lightning cables to the electronics recycling. You must treat equipment exceptionally roughly.
- lloeki 3y ago
  I am full USB-C. I have a kid. Mine are treated very roughly. Not a single one ever broke. Comparatively, microusb has died on me quite a lot from regular usage, and always on the device side, which is so much worse. (Now the cat chewing on cables in another matter xD)
- kimbernator 3y ago
  Yeah, I've never once seen a USB-C cable break in that the physical connector itself was damaged. I've been through plenty that just seem to stop reliably connecting if they are in high-motion environments (the cable connecting my phone to my car's entertainment system, for instance) I will say that I really wish they had managed to not have that middle section sticking up in the female connectors - cleaning out my phone's USB-C port is about 20x harder than cleaning out a lighting port because I feel like I'm going to break that little thing in the middle.
- dheera 3y ago
  No, I treat equipment as any consumer would. Like if my phone is low on battery I plug it into a portable battery and shove the phone and portable battery (connected by a USB-C cable) into my pocket, like any consumer would. I then go hiking, snowshoeing, biking, sleeping, like any consumer would. Cables have bent and broken in my pocket in these scenarios, among thousands of others. My parent comment was yesterday; today's USB-C cable broke when it got stuck in an office chair's wheel caster, bending the sheet metal housing. Thi doesn't happen with ANY connector of the 1990s. BNC, RCA, DB-9, 1/8" headphone jacks, 5.5x2.5 barrel connectors, they ALL withstood office chair crushing and were all probably designed with consumer abuse like office chairs in mind. I've even run over DB-9 and BNC connectors with heavy duty carts, they were fine.