exept when manufacturer don't give a fuck and print whatever or nothing next to the port. like always
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
1592 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
60462 readers
3886 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
TL;DR: The USB Implementers Forum is ridiculously bad at naming, symbols and communication in general. (And they don't seriously enforce any of this anyway, so don't even bother learning it.)
load more comments
(19 replies)
Most devices don't have theese symbols and basically say fuck you unless you know how to find the specs
What about red USB-A ports, and USB-C ports with no symbol by them at all (like on phones and desktop PCs)?
load more comments
(3 replies)
some additional info about USB. If your cable/connector is old, idk how old is requred, the names and standards are actually completely different now than they used to be, but they're adopted into the new standards, so you have to keep this in mind when trying to recognize this stuff.
thanks USB forum, you guys are the best :)
I just love that in a world with Power Delivery (PD) they decided that the best way to indicate Display Port (DP) was to have an ambiguous symbol involving a P and a D.
I like how they (seem to) try to get away from Latin alphabet, just to go with DP for display port.
The P and D symbol is the DisplayPort logo. I'm not sure when it was first used, but the DisplayPort standard itself is quite a bit older than USB Power Delivery.
It's still confusing though regardless of which can lay the best claim to the letters P and D. I would have suggested Power Delivery could use some sort of lightning bolt symbol, but then I realised that would probably conflict with Thunderbolt, which also uses USB-C.
It's almost as if having all these different features would be easier to differentiate if they had different physical shapes.
How about a monitor/TV for display.
I like that battery for power, though a vertical battery would be clearer.
load more comments
(1 replies)
You'll want to run USB PD, not to be confused with the USB "P" and "D" label which refers to DisplayPort, not to be confused with some other ways of transporting DisplayPort over USB. And you'll want charging support, so look for the USB lightning bolt that means "USB charging", not to be confused with the different USB lightning bolt that means "Thunderbolt", which isn't the same thing as the Lightning connector that is about the same size as the USB-C connector and was used in a similar role on various devices.
Piece of cake.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Thank God there's a standard for USB. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And another one....
load more comments
(1 replies)
Those will legally do pretty much anything depending on what cable you use anyway. (and what cable you end up using is pretty much a surprise until you've tested it.)
All thanks to USB making our lives more simple. (yay)
Ok, I suppose it is more simple in quite a few ways.
USB in 1996: Let's make one connector that handles everything
USB in 2024: Let's make one connector do thirty different incompatible combinations of things
While USB is now needlessly complicated and poorly labeled for consumer understanding, at least it succeeds in being backwards compatible so long as the physical connectors match (and all you need is a dumb adapter to convert any connector). If you have a 3.0 port on one device, a 2.0 port on the other device, and a 3.1 cable, you get 2.0 transfer speeds.
HDMI has the same kind of "issue". Whatever the specs on each component, throughput and features drop to the lowest common denominator when in use.
load more comments
(1 replies)
To be fair, the goal is the same.
- Not everyone needs the sheer CPU, power, and costs of a 40 GB/s connection.
- Higher wattage chargers cost more
- Not everyone needs a USB port that does video out (even if it should be standard now that virtually every new GPU should be compatible)
- Even if the CPU and GPU support a feature, the OEM can use a cheaper controller
- The controller firmware can lack support for a feature or be buggy
The USB forum can only solve points 4 and 5 without raising costs on the cheapest hardware.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I've never seen the one enclosed in a battery, but I've seen the rest.
Also don't forget the dubious AliExpress devices that have all these symbols, no data lines, Vcc at 12V and ground attached to a loose M8 nut.
I guess they could have a USB certification body, kinda like UL is for wall power devices, and require that a device have an certification ID number on it that you could look up in their online database to qualify. I mean, you could forge a fake number that doesn't map to anything, but I feel like that's a higher bar than just throwing a USB symbol on there. Like, you gotta know that you're doing something fraudulent in that case.
investigates
Huh.
Apparently UL does certify USB devices. I have no idea how to tell whether a UL-marked device of a given age is certified to do what from the logo alone, though. I guess you could look it up with UL.
https://www.ul.com/services/ul-taiwan-usb-test-lab
I bet that only my high-power USB chargers have it, though. Honestly, I didn't even know that they covered USB, wouldn't have looked for a UL mark on USB devices.
investigates
Well, my Logitech F710 gamepad does have a UL mark. That's some proprietary wireless protocol, uses AA batteries. Not USB and doesn't plug into the wall. Dunno whether they certified it for wireless or power safety or whatever.
looks further
I have a wired USB gamepad with a bunch of Chinese characters, the URL "www.izdtech.com", no USB labels, and no UL mark.
I have a wired/wireless USB 8Bitdo gamepad with a CE mark, USB symbols, and no UL mark (I understand that CE doesn't work like UL. It doesn't indicate that any independent organization has tested the device, just is a concise way to state that the device manufacturer states that the device conforms to some set of standards).
I have a 100W USB PD "Nekteck" charger with a UL mark and some ID number that looks to be associated with that, no CE mark, an FCC mark that I assume is related to RF interference compliance, an enormous USB standard mark with the 100 watt capability listed, and some sort of mark with a box inside another box that I don't recognize.
I have an SIIG USB audio interface that has no USB labels, a CE mark, an FCC mark, and no UL mark.
I have a USB-powered audio mixer that has no USB labels, no FCC mark, no UL mark and a CE mark.
I have a laptop USB charger that has no USB labels, a CE mark, multiple UL marks, one of which appears to be in some sort of teardrop-looking thing, some "UK CA" mark that I assume is some kind of UK regulatory body. It's got that same mysterious "box in a box" mark that I saw before, "VI" in a circle, a picture of a house, some "NYCE" mark, and a "NOM" mark.
I bet that most people have basically no idea what any of this means. I probably know what more of it means than the average person, but definitely not enough to extract a whole lot of information from this. And all of these have a different set of marks; there is no least-common-denominator mark.
load more comments
(3 replies)