I found it at the dollar store.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    Don’t think of it as a tiny cable, think of it as a gender bender. You can put on the end of some female cable.

    You’re more likely to see dongles like this at fixed installations. Like somebody puts a USB port into a wall, like a speaker’s podium, or a presentation stand. So one side is fixed, depending on what you want to hook up to it, you might need to have a gender bender.

      • @[email protected]
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        671 year ago

        USB is bi-directional. So it really doesn’t care about the plug gender. Some other protocols are directional, then the plug gender is very important, so adapters for directional protocols tend to be more expensive, it may even require external power.

        Once USB on the go was invented it cease to matter at all.

    • @x4740N
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      121 year ago

      What your describing sounds more like a double ended dildo

      • @[email protected]
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        281 year ago

        As long as the double ended dildo provided low impedance electrical through ways, and distinct electrical paths for at least four conduits, with minimal capacitive cross talk… then yes

        • @[email protected]
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          161 year ago

          I like you and your style. Do not let a stupid dirty joke get in the way of proper electrical and data connections. It tells me where your priorities are and I respect that.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        double ended dildo

        Isn’t that just a gender bender for women? Now we just need a double ended fleshlight for equality… And no I’m not going to google that!

  • @x4740N
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    751 year ago

    If you think about it, this is the USB equivalent of a double ended dildo

    • Ook the Librarian
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      1 year ago

      Or turn 2 extension cords into a long one.

      But a serious answer is that these are sometimes sold in a kit of adapters that would let you change the head. Most kits like used a normal cord as the base cord, but some used USB extension cords as the base cord. So this is meant to be a replacement part, not useful in its own right.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          They are good for wifi/bt/radio usb receivers used for keyboard/mouse/gamepads…so they can be in a better place like higher or further.

  • @Z4rK
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    531 year ago

    I’ve used them for extension, as it allows you to attach a second, regular USB cable to it.

    • @salton
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      1 year ago

      Removed by mod

      • @MotoAsh
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        -11 year ago

        In this case, less so, because any normal A to A cable would do the same thing, just with more room to spare.

        Agreed in general, though. I have so many random audio and video adaptors that I’ve used a surprising number of times.

    • iAmTheTot
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      141 year ago

      Well, what do you mean by “regular”? The cable would need to be female on at least one end, which I usually see in… USB extension cables.

    • @LesserAbe
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      81 year ago

      Not that you probably need to know this, but for some other stranger: there’s a max functional length to USB cables. At work I remember pulling my hair out troubleshooting a printer until we swapped cables for something shorter.

      • @[email protected]
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        91 year ago

        And that max length goes down with each coupling.

        We have smart boards in most classrooms, but in an entire wing of my department the smart board doesn’t work. Reason? When we built the wing, 8 or 10 years ago, the installers fitted their own low grade plugs on the USB connection for the boards, before figuring out that they snipped the cables too short. Instead of running new cabling the installers then introduced another extension.

        Nobody cared to check it out before accepting delivery and my complaints went unheard by management, until it was too late to RMA it.

      • @[email protected]
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        61 year ago

        That said, there are “active” USB extension cables which draw current from the power lines and use it to boost the signal along the data lines

      • Polar
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        21 year ago

        Meanwhile I have 25ft cables running my large format vinyl printers lol

        • @sysadmin420
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          21 year ago

          My large format vinyl printer uses Ethernet. TIL there are USB vinyl printers. What kind of printer do you have? Latex 260 here

          • squiblet
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            11 year ago

            We had a 53" US Cutter and it attached to the computer by USB. If we’re talking about the same thing.

            • @sysadmin420
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              1 year ago

              He said printer though that’s what’s what threw me off. That’s a cutter. My bad I thought he was talking about a USB large format printer, I only replied because I’m looking for a slightly smaller printer for my smaller decals, and I’d be interested in a serial or USB printer.

              My PC is in the basement and I’ve got USB and serial going everywhere running different cutters, 3d printers, CNC, etc upstairs and down, also in the garage. Works great.

  • @[email protected]
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    Such A-to-A adaptors and cables always have been prohibited by the USB spec, but people built them anyway. A common usecase for “illegal” A-A cables i remember was connecting PCIe cards (especially GPUs and mining cards) externally to riser sockets.

    • @accideath
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      231 year ago

      I have an external 3,5“ HDD enclosure that needs a male to male USB 3.0 A cable to plug into a PC. Still wondering, why they didn’t use B…

      • @[email protected]
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        121 year ago

        That’s really odd. Why use a host connector when a client connector is intended for the purpose.

        Did they entirely miss the purpose of USB?

      • I_Miss_Daniel
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        21 year ago

        I have a similar caddy. Many years old now. The connection to the host computer is a USB-A female, so connecting it requires a male to male cable.

      • @evidences
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        21 year ago

        I bought a breadboard power supply and the options to feed it power are a barrel jack and usb-a. Considering the size of the thing mini or micro would have made way more sense.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          The ones I have go trough the onboard voltage regulator and you can use them to power USB-devices. I suppose they’ve skipped diodes and other protective components so it can feed back to the circuit, but I haven’t tested that.

  • Kalash
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    1 year ago

    To connect two USB-A ports.

    Basically the same as a USB-A to USB-A cable, just really short.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 year ago

      USB-A to USB-A cables do not exist, the USB standard does not allow them, if you have a cable with two USB-A connectors then it’s not actually a certified USB cable. The same goes for USB extension cables and this adapter. Note how there isn’t a ‘USB certified’ logo on the package.

      • @SpaceNoodle
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        The cables exist; they just don’t follow the standard. I’ve used them when developing consumer electronics: the host controller on the device switches to device mode in the bootloader, allowing a host machine to connect and debug/flash the device.

      • Kalash
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        131 year ago

        USB-A to USB-A cables do not exist

        wtf are you talking about, of course they do.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          They meant cables in spec with the USB specification at the time usb-a was new.

          Now with usb-c, it’s kinda moot, as most cables are male to male anyway… of course that means we’re more likely to see USB-C female to female adopters now

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            USB-C female to female adapters also are out of spec. The USB standard does not allow for extensions. USB cables only have male connectors (with the exception of USB-OTG dongles).

            • @evidences
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              61 year ago

              Or like saying usb-a to usb-c adapters don’t exist because they’re not part of the standard but we all have like six of those damn things even though we’ve never actually bought a single one.

                • @evidences
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                  11 year ago

                  Are they? Everything I can find seems to say they aren’t.

                  I remember when the first usb-c Macbooks hit stores Apple didn’t have usb-a to c adapters for sale because they weren’t in spec, a lot of reviews mentioned that.

          • Kalash
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            111 year ago

            They cables and exist and they work. So being “specified” doesn’t mean jack shit.

      • @guidedlight
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        31 year ago

        USB-A to USB-A cables do exist.

        I have seen many (very cheap) peripherals use USB-A sockets. I figure those sockets must be a few cents cheaper than alternatives.

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            China stuff loves to slap logos on there that do not apply, so probably without having seen this particular abomination myself. Fake CE markings are super common though.

      • big_bangus
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        11 year ago

        They do exist, despite the USB standards not allowing them

        See: cheapo video capture card for work, other side is just HDMI-IN and OUT

        They shouldn’t exist but don’t mean they don’t when you get the cheapest little devices you can find

        • @[email protected]
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          They do exist, despite the USB standards not allowing them

          A USB cable is a cable that conforms to the USB specification. If a cable does not conform to the USB specification then it isn’t an USB cable by definition

          I’m not saying a cable with 2 USB-A style connectors doesn’t exist, I’m just saying that it is not a USB cable. Just like a glass of Pepsi is not a glass of Coca-Cola even though it may look like one.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        USB-A to USB-A doesn’t exist

        *looks at old charger from an American device*

        HOLY SHIT A CRYPTID CALL SCP

      • squiblet
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        11 year ago

        It’s not hard to imagine a product that would require one, though. It’s how every phone charging cable works, just with a different size male USB on one end.

        • @[email protected]
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          It’s how every phone charging cable works, just with a different size male USB on one end.

          No, it’s exactly not how every phone charging cable works, at least not for non USB-C cables.

          Pre-USB-C cables are explicitly unidirectional. In USB there are ‘hosts’ (usually computers) and ‘devices’ (flashdrives, camera’s, mice, keyboards, etc.). The host side always has a female USB-A connector, a device either has a female USB-B connector (if it’s intended to be used with a cable), or a male USB-A (if it’s intended to be plugged in directly into a host, like a flash drive). A real, standard-conformant USB cable can only go from USB-A male to USB-B male (with the addition of USB-C, it can also go from A-to-C, from C-to-B, or C-to-C). Never A-to-A or B-to-B, extension cables (male to female) of any type, A, B or C, are not allowed either.

          USB was specifically designed like this so you can never connect a device to a device or a host to a host.

          On the host side, you pretty much only see full size USB-A ports. On the device side there are 3 common types of USB-B ports: standard size (you can for example see these on printers and scanners), mini-USB-B used a lot on older phones, and later micro-USB-B. On each side the male part is on the cable, the female part is on the host or device.

  • LazaroFilm
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    131 year ago

    I used to have a portable hard drive that had a usb-A/ e-sata hybrid connector and I had to use a USB A to A cable (or e-data) to use it.

  • @Rand0mA
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    Get 2 laptops, put them side by side with usb ports wide open and plug them bitches together. Likely will short with 5v being fed both sides.

    But in reality its a usb coupler (plugging together 2x usb extension cables). Not a great lot of use from them in my opinion. I’ve seen shit bodged together in low budget it offices using edge case crap like this.