Comment by booty

20 hours ago

God, yeah. I try to label the USB-C cables directly by capability with my label maker, if they are more than basic charging cables.

19 comments

booty

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zxexz  6 hours ago

Somewhat recently, on a wild night out on the town, I ended up buying a USB-C <> USB-C cable tester[0]. Using it, I managed to find a few amazing cables amongst my collection. Gave away the others with context. I want something like this for every type of cable.

[0] https://caberqu.com/20-42-c2c-caberqu.html

  • unwind  5 hours ago

    I like your idea of a wild night out!

    Note to others: that tester board looks fairly passive, i.e. I don't see (mention of) a microcontroller to talk to the chip that high-powered cables must have. So I guess it's somewhat limited in the number of things it can check?

    • alias_neo  3 hours ago

      I have a cheaper version, it does basically all one needs by telling you how many conductors the cable has, if it's only got 4 lights lit up it's a simple USB2, more power LEDs is a higher power charging cable, more data pairs, higher data throughput/USB3, nearly all of the lights (usually bar 1 of the CCX) it's full DP/Thunderbot, data, charging, A/V etc.

      Sometimes it even shows USB-C connectors that are only wired for one orientation!

    • gunalx  4 hours ago

      More often than not just knowing the contact has OK connection is good enough.

      As far as I know the marker chips is mostly to tell the devices to not abuse the cable.

  • tmountain  4 hours ago

    What makes for an amazing cable? For USB, if it carries data and power, I’m usually pretty happy with it.

    • alias_neo  3 hours ago

      For USB, if it can carry 65W+ of power to my laptop as well as the Keyboard/Mouse inputs, 4K/60Hz display and audio back to the monitor as well as KB/Mouse and perhaps some external storage or network adapter, that's a pretty amazing cable.

      I also have preferences between my cables by the quality and aesthetic, I prefer some over others because they look or feel nicer even if in testing they contain the same conductors, but that's just ... me.

      I currently have 3 such cables connected to my work laptop each sending 4K/60Hz video to each of my 3 x 4k monitors, audio to my soundbar and one of them is powering the laptop at 90W and sending my keyboard, mouse and webcam inputs back.

      1 reply →

dataflow  16 hours ago

What marker do you use to mark them? Is the ink durable and easy to read?

  • mceachen  11 hours ago

    I bought a cheap pack of 5 colors of 3m electrical tape. Each cable gets one or two pieces of tape:

    Data:

    White if usb2

    Blue if it supports USB 3 data (because 5Gbps USB 3 ports are mostly blue)

    Green if TB/USB4/40Gbps

    Power:

    None if low/no Power Delivery

    Yellow for 45W PD

    Red for 65W+ PD