Technology

59581 readers

3148 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 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

578

USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

259 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Also a male USB 2 plug fits perfectly into a RJ45 slot :-/ In my days of tech support, I've seen multiple people plugging their USB printer cable into the network slot of their computer and it's a perfect fit so they were always convinced they didn't do anything wrong... That's clearly a design flaw while all other connectors have distinct sizes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never heard of people plugging USB into LAN, but now that you mention it they are the same size. Luckily all the contacts are shielded.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I've done it myself when feeling the back of a pc and trying to get away without looking. I've been doing IT support since high school.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Way back before USB, joysticks had a DIN-25 connector that was identical to the ~~MIDI~~ network connector.

I blindly plugged my brand new MS Force Feedback joystick into the ~~MIDI~~ network port behind my miditower (yes I'm that old) and watched the magic smoke rise out of the joystick. That was not a good day to learn about plugs. The network carries 50 volts or something. Stick wasn't happy.

edit: corrections! Here's a photo of the network card: https://i.imgur.com/fBJixkM.png

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Strange. I always thought they were the exact same port. Because most of the time you would need a sound card to plug in a joystick. And nowadays I can't use my MS Force Feedback because all the USB adaptors don't implement all of the MIDI stuff the joystick needs to run the force feedback.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Oh you are right, I misremembered: what actually happened was that I was indeed going for the MIDI port of my SoundBlaster card but found a matching socket in my networrk card!

I will update my comment to correct this.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My girlfriend works in IT at a school so I asked if she's encountered this too. She said "all the time, they're right next to each other" she also added that a lot of people put their thin charging cables into the headphone jack breaking their laptops. And that for some of them they "fit better" in that jack than the one it's meant to go in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You mean USB Type-B, right?