7 ms·

My take on USB-A: aside from audio connectors that have axial symmetry (and have no meaningful orientation), I never used any reversible computer cables prior t

My take on USB-A: aside from audio connectors that have axial symmetry (and have no meaningful orientation), I never used any reversible computer cables prior to USB-C, and that’s not the main issue. Nor is it the axis of symmetry of the casing allowing failed upside down plugin attempts. The shitty part of USB-A is that the tactile feedback of being slightly misaligned is identical to it being upside down. My experience tells me no amount of vigorous jiggling or extreme self-confidence will ever allow for consistent average 1.5 attempt plugins. All the standards before USB were in my memory even less user-friendly — trying in vain to reach behind a heavy computer and unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI plug with slippery bent plastic jacketed heads. Almost zero clearance from the plug case, that really did suck. Screw it in slightly loser next time, now you’ve got a flickering monitor, dummy. And ps2/mini-din connectors sucked too - having the connector off-center or at the wrong rotation also felt quite indistinguishable.

postmodest 3y ago
At least PS/2 cables were mostly made with "keyed" rubber jackets where one side was flat and the other rounded, so in the dark you could tell which way was up. (Though, that keyboard and mouse were different ports was stupid, so it loses points there)
- userbinator 3y ago
  Keyboard was always the one closest to the mobo, since it was there first (and was originally a larger, more robust DIN connector); the mouse piggybacked on top of that later.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Never have I been able to successfully plug a PS/2 port in by haptics alone. I can totally see how they were designed to theoretically allow for it; practically, the tactile feedback for the correct orientation is just way too subtle. And regarding the two different ports: I can't remember (or rather, I was never motivated to revisit the plugs once connected to experiment, since it was such a pain) – was there a technical reason for that, or could modern mainboards/BIOSes/OSes detect and correct for that?
  - a1369209993 3y ago
    > was there a technical reason for that, or could modern mainboards/BIOSes/OSes detect and correct for that? IIRC, there was a technical reason in that original mainboards lacked the circuitry to detect and correct for it (I think different mouse vs keyboard interrupts were involved?), and it would have been a extra x¢ on the BOM. But modern mainboards just use two of the same circuit and in fact do work fine if you swap them (tested just now, sample size of 1).
- kelnos 3y ago
  But then you have to remember the orientation of the port itself! That sounds silly, but I forgot a non-trivial number of times.
- barrkel 3y ago
  PS/2 connectors were a regression on AT DIN & D sub 9-pin serial for most practical purposes. The only upside of PS/2 was a higher mouse data rate, particularly with high monitor refresh rates, made mouse movement smoother. You didn't get this for free in Windows though, you needed a registry tweak to tell the mouse driver to bump the sample rate. The huge downside was that PS/2 peripherals couldn't be inserted when the PC is turned on. They need to be inserted at boot time, and aren't detected if they're plugged in later. And the keyboard and mouse connectors were physically the same but not generally switchable.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    The fact that keyboard and mouse connectors in ps/2 were not interchangeable was really annoying. No matter how much USB-A is annoying, this alone made having USB keyboards and mice a win in my book.
lxgr 3y ago
> trying in vain to reach behind a heavy computer and unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI plug with slippery bent plastic jacketed heads Oh yes, that brings back very bad memories. Only gradually did it dawn on me that nothing really bad actually happens if I didn't screw the connectors tight on DVI/VGA etc. :) (Yes, these are technically not plug-and-play, but the occasional disconnect sure beat all the banging my head on the desk and swearing profusely every time I changed something with my personal setup.)
- fireflash38 3y ago
  It's like VGA cables came with loctite pregooped on with how hard they were to unscrew.
  - keep_reading 3y ago
    I think it was the plastic material for those screws and heat. Over time it just gets tighter because the computer is warm and the plastic expands.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  This is what I do with these (terrible) screw-in connectors. - Loosely plug in the connector - Screw in the right side, relatively tight - Use the right screw as a pivot point, by pushing the plug to the left, this will properly seat in the connector - Screw in the left side until it touches, do not tighten To unscrew, use the left side as a pivot point by pushing the plug to the right, this should loosen the right screw, unscrew it, then, unscrew the left side, which shouldn't be tight if you did it correctly. Note: you can switch left for right and right for left. The general idea is to wiggle left and right by using the screws as pivots. Do this to unscrew if it is too tight. If only one side is screwed in (don't do that) and it is too tight, screw in the other side and use the pivot trick. I don't like not screwing these in as they have a tendency to come loose, especially since they also have poor feedback and chances are that they aren't properly inserted to begin with. And side note: another thing I hate with this plugs is that when you pull out the cable, the plug tends to grab ever other cable that's on their way. In fact, some of these plugs look suspiciously like boat anchors and seem to be just as effective at grabbing stuff.
layer8 3y ago
The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can remember. The 9-pin joystick ports never caused much trouble. Making the USB connectors symmetric in their outer shape but not symmetrically pluggable was really inexcusable. When it came out I remember thinking that it was worse than any of the existing connectors. And this is supposed to be the new “universal” connector?
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  > The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can remember. I never personally had a problem with them, but I can attest that people did. At my first job (a small computer shop), we had multiple customers who tried to jam their D-sub connector on wrong, and broke one or more pins off. Since this was back in the day when the cable was hard wired into the monitor, that generally meant they had to buy a new monitor.
  - nerpderp82 3y ago
    That is malicious, you cut off the d-sub connector and put another one on. I have never heard of someone replacing a monitor because the pins on the connector were damaged.
    - bigstrat2003 3y ago
      I've never heard of anyone replacing their hard wired monitor cable. And in any case I certainly wouldn't have had the skills, so I think "malicious" is an uncalled-for term here. Maybe my boss (the owner) knew better and chose to charge people for new monitors, but I definitely didn't.
      - lmm 3y ago
        Have you never wired a plug? I'm baffled that it would never occur to you that the connector is replaceable.
        3y ago
Findecanor 3y ago
I fail to understand what you mean with plugging a mini-DIN plug "off-center". Please explain! I find it easy to use by feel alone. You can feel when the sleeve fits the socket. Then you can rotate it in the socket until it can go all the way in.
- ghusbands 3y ago
  Given the number of bent pins I've seen on mini-DIN connectors, I think people don't find it as easy as you do.
- aranchelk 3y ago
  You’re reaching around the back of a computer and you can’t see the exact location of the mini-din jack, you have to angle the plug normal to the plane of the computer back (more or less), you have to center the plug (translate the plug horizontally and vertically) to align it with the jack, and you have to rotate it so the the indentation (and of course pins) align. But… My old computers all had a slippery steel plate surrounding the jacks, and the jacks had plastic centers aligned flush with the plate, having the plug overlap the steel plate never felt terribly different from only having the rotation wrong.
xorcist 3y ago
Ah, the token ring connectors. Not reversible, but genderless.
AnotherGoodName 3y ago
This is somewhat related as it's the next step of the above. The floating tongue of the USB connection is in the socket, not the on the cable. As in the most fragile part of the design is on the device side, not the cable side. This means that you can more easily break your $1000 device not the $2 cable. They repeated this mistake with USB-C as well. It's not hard to make a port where the cable is the free floating tongue and the device is a more robust socket that wraps around that fragile piece. I know everyone's happy about the iPhone moving to USB-C but the tongue on the cable side that it had was much better. Anyone who's tripped on a cable and broken a USB socket can attest to this.
- mtoner23 3y ago
  Idk, lightning has the opposite problem where the contacts are exposed and degrade very quickly on the cable and need to be replaced constantly. Great for apple. And lightning has the gripping pins on the phone which degrade rather quickly too over repeated use. No cable is perfect I fear
  - AnotherGoodName 3y ago
    Fwiw as a known clutz i haven't yet broken a USB C socket, the worst i've done is gummed a socket up with pocket lint. The symmetry helps avoid as many issues. I did break USB A sockets though. They could easily be jammed in backwards and with the offset from center tongue and the cable perfectly designed to wedge in the wrong way and snap the tongue i did it far too often.
  - nucleardog 3y ago
    Unless we go to something radically different then one side or the other is going to have the flimsy bits. For my money, I’d take a flimsy cable over a flimsy device port. Replacing a cable is a two minute trip to Amazon. Replacing a device port is a pricey and annoying trip to a repair shop or an evening with my soldering iron cursing the universe.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
hedora 3y ago
The best feature of those little thumb screws was that the computer-side mount could become unscrewed and fall off when you were trying to remove the cable. On some machines, it was held in with a tiny little nut on the inside of the case. The nut was just the right size to fall onto a motherboard and bridge PCB traces or exposed I/O pins. Of course, there was no way to detect this by feel.
- ikari_pl 3y ago
  now this sounds like you've had a terrible accident. worst I ever had was the computer side falling out on the outside (no bolt, it was just threaded into the case itself)
reilly3000 3y ago
This brought back many bad memories of trying to straighten a bent pin with needle-nose pliers and other tools that weren’t made of the job.
- sitkack 3y ago
  I find small flat bladed screw drivers work well.
polynomial 3y ago
> the tactile feedback of being slightly misaligned is identical to it being upside down. Did that come out right? (Asking as I have a similar hypothesis- depending on your answer.)
zajio1am 3y ago
> unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI Yes, it was kind of annoying, but OTOH it provided reliable robustness. Today, many connectors are just too prone to unintentional disconnect. And in the case of optional locks, like e.g. on some DP cables, one never know if the cable has the lock or is just stuck.
avereveard 3y ago
3.5 mm audio jack: I'm absolutely perfect

postmodest 3y ago

At least PS/2 cables were mostly made with "keyed" rubber jackets where one side was flat and the other rounded, so in the dark you could tell which way was up. (Though, that keyboard and mouse were different ports was stupid, so it loses points there)

userbinator 3y ago
Keyboard was always the one closest to the mobo, since it was there first (and was originally a larger, more robust DIN connector); the mouse piggybacked on top of that later.
lxgr 3y ago
Never have I been able to successfully plug a PS/2 port in by haptics alone. I can totally see how they were designed to theoretically allow for it; practically, the tactile feedback for the correct orientation is just way too subtle. And regarding the two different ports: I can't remember (or rather, I was never motivated to revisit the plugs once connected to experiment, since it was such a pain) – was there a technical reason for that, or could modern mainboards/BIOSes/OSes detect and correct for that?
- a1369209993 3y ago
  > was there a technical reason for that, or could modern mainboards/BIOSes/OSes detect and correct for that? IIRC, there was a technical reason in that original mainboards lacked the circuitry to detect and correct for it (I think different mouse vs keyboard interrupts were involved?), and it would have been a extra x¢ on the BOM. But modern mainboards just use two of the same circuit and in fact do work fine if you swap them (tested just now, sample size of 1).
kelnos 3y ago
But then you have to remember the orientation of the port itself! That sounds silly, but I forgot a non-trivial number of times.
barrkel 3y ago
PS/2 connectors were a regression on AT DIN & D sub 9-pin serial for most practical purposes. The only upside of PS/2 was a higher mouse data rate, particularly with high monitor refresh rates, made mouse movement smoother. You didn't get this for free in Windows though, you needed a registry tweak to tell the mouse driver to bump the sample rate. The huge downside was that PS/2 peripherals couldn't be inserted when the PC is turned on. They need to be inserted at boot time, and aren't detected if they're plugged in later. And the keyboard and mouse connectors were physically the same but not generally switchable.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  The fact that keyboard and mouse connectors in ps/2 were not interchangeable was really annoying. No matter how much USB-A is annoying, this alone made having USB keyboards and mice a win in my book.

lxgr 3y ago

> trying in vain to reach behind a heavy computer and unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI plug with slippery bent plastic jacketed heads Oh yes, that brings back very bad memories. Only gradually did it dawn on me that nothing really bad actually happens if I didn't screw the connectors tight on DVI/VGA etc. :) (Yes, these are technically not plug-and-play, but the occasional disconnect sure beat all the banging my head on the desk and swearing profusely every time I changed something with my personal setup.)

fireflash38 3y ago
It's like VGA cables came with loctite pregooped on with how hard they were to unscrew.
- keep_reading 3y ago
  I think it was the plastic material for those screws and heat. Over time it just gets tighter because the computer is warm and the plastic expands.
GuB-42 3y ago
This is what I do with these (terrible) screw-in connectors. - Loosely plug in the connector - Screw in the right side, relatively tight - Use the right screw as a pivot point, by pushing the plug to the left, this will properly seat in the connector - Screw in the left side until it touches, do not tighten To unscrew, use the left side as a pivot point by pushing the plug to the right, this should loosen the right screw, unscrew it, then, unscrew the left side, which shouldn't be tight if you did it correctly. Note: you can switch left for right and right for left. The general idea is to wiggle left and right by using the screws as pivots. Do this to unscrew if it is too tight. If only one side is screwed in (don't do that) and it is too tight, screw in the other side and use the pivot trick. I don't like not screwing these in as they have a tendency to come loose, especially since they also have poor feedback and chances are that they aren't properly inserted to begin with. And side note: another thing I hate with this plugs is that when you pull out the cable, the plug tends to grab ever other cable that's on their way. In fact, some of these plugs look suspiciously like boat anchors and seem to be just as effective at grabbing stuff.

layer8 3y ago

The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can remember. The 9-pin joystick ports never caused much trouble. Making the USB connectors symmetric in their outer shape but not symmetrically pluggable was really inexcusable. When it came out I remember thinking that it was worse than any of the existing connectors. And this is supposed to be the new “universal” connector?

bigstrat2003 3y ago
> The D-sub connectors were pretty intuitive, as far as I can remember. I never personally had a problem with them, but I can attest that people did. At my first job (a small computer shop), we had multiple customers who tried to jam their D-sub connector on wrong, and broke one or more pins off. Since this was back in the day when the cable was hard wired into the monitor, that generally meant they had to buy a new monitor.
- nerpderp82 3y ago
  That is malicious, you cut off the d-sub connector and put another one on. I have never heard of someone replacing a monitor because the pins on the connector were damaged.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    I've never heard of anyone replacing their hard wired monitor cable. And in any case I certainly wouldn't have had the skills, so I think "malicious" is an uncalled-for term here. Maybe my boss (the owner) knew better and chose to charge people for new monitors, but I definitely didn't.
    - lmm 3y ago
      Have you never wired a plug? I'm baffled that it would never occur to you that the connector is replaceable.
      - 3y ago

Findecanor 3y ago

I fail to understand what you mean with plugging a mini-DIN plug "off-center". Please explain! I find it easy to use by feel alone. You can feel when the sleeve fits the socket. Then you can rotate it in the socket until it can go all the way in.

ghusbands 3y ago
Given the number of bent pins I've seen on mini-DIN connectors, I think people don't find it as easy as you do.
aranchelk 3y ago
You’re reaching around the back of a computer and you can’t see the exact location of the mini-din jack, you have to angle the plug normal to the plane of the computer back (more or less), you have to center the plug (translate the plug horizontally and vertically) to align it with the jack, and you have to rotate it so the the indentation (and of course pins) align. But… My old computers all had a slippery steel plate surrounding the jacks, and the jacks had plastic centers aligned flush with the plate, having the plug overlap the steel plate never felt terribly different from only having the rotation wrong.

xorcist 3y ago

Ah, the token ring connectors. Not reversible, but genderless.

AnotherGoodName 3y ago

This is somewhat related as it's the next step of the above. The floating tongue of the USB connection is in the socket, not the on the cable. As in the most fragile part of the design is on the device side, not the cable side. This means that you can more easily break your $1000 device not the $2 cable. They repeated this mistake with USB-C as well. It's not hard to make a port where the cable is the free floating tongue and the device is a more robust socket that wraps around that fragile piece. I know everyone's happy about the iPhone moving to USB-C but the tongue on the cable side that it had was much better. Anyone who's tripped on a cable and broken a USB socket can attest to this.

mtoner23 3y ago
Idk, lightning has the opposite problem where the contacts are exposed and degrade very quickly on the cable and need to be replaced constantly. Great for apple. And lightning has the gripping pins on the phone which degrade rather quickly too over repeated use. No cable is perfect I fear
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  Fwiw as a known clutz i haven't yet broken a USB C socket, the worst i've done is gummed a socket up with pocket lint. The symmetry helps avoid as many issues. I did break USB A sockets though. They could easily be jammed in backwards and with the offset from center tongue and the cable perfectly designed to wedge in the wrong way and snap the tongue i did it far too often.
- nucleardog 3y ago
  Unless we go to something radically different then one side or the other is going to have the flimsy bits. For my money, I’d take a flimsy cable over a flimsy device port. Replacing a cable is a two minute trip to Amazon. Replacing a device port is a pricey and annoying trip to a repair shop or an evening with my soldering iron cursing the universe.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

hedora 3y ago

The best feature of those little thumb screws was that the computer-side mount could become unscrewed and fall off when you were trying to remove the cable. On some machines, it was held in with a tiny little nut on the inside of the case. The nut was just the right size to fall onto a motherboard and bridge PCB traces or exposed I/O pins. Of course, there was no way to detect this by feel.

ikari_pl 3y ago
now this sounds like you've had a terrible accident. worst I ever had was the computer side falling out on the outside (no bolt, it was just threaded into the case itself)

reilly3000 3y ago

This brought back many bad memories of trying to straighten a bent pin with needle-nose pliers and other tools that weren’t made of the job.

sitkack 3y ago
I find small flat bladed screw drivers work well.

polynomial 3y ago

> the tactile feedback of being slightly misaligned is identical to it being upside down. Did that come out right? (Asking as I have a similar hypothesis- depending on your answer.)

zajio1am 3y ago

> unscrew the two jammed retaining bolts holding in a serial, parallel, scsi, vga, or DVI Yes, it was kind of annoying, but OTOH it provided reliable robustness. Today, many connectors are just too prone to unintentional disconnect. And in the case of optional locks, like e.g. on some DP cables, one never know if the cable has the lock or is just stuck.

avereveard 3y ago

3.5 mm audio jack: I'm absolutely perfect