this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
1341 points (93.1% liked)

Technology

59608 readers
4742 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Burn all the USBC cables with fire except PD. The top PD cable does everything the lower cable does.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 23 hours ago

IDK I’ve had PD cables that looked good for a while but turns out their data rate was basically USB2. It seems no matter what rule of thumb I try there are always weird caveats.

No, I’m not bitter, why would you ask that?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

There are many PD cables that are bad for doing data.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Correct. The other commenter is giving bad advice.

Both power delivery and bandwidth are backwards compatible, but they are independent specifications on USB-C cables. You can even get PD capable USB-C cables that don’t transmit data at all.

Also, that’s not true for Thunderbolt cables. Each of the 5 versions have specific data and power delivery minimum and maximum specifications.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

You can even get PD capable USB-C cables that don’t transmit data at all.

I don't think this is right. The PD standard requires the negotiation of which side is the source and which is the sink, and the voltage/amperage, over those data links. So it has to at least support the bare minimum data transmission in order for PD to work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Technically, yes, data must transmit to negotiate, but it doesn’t require high throughput. So you’ll get USB 2.0 transfer speeds (480 Mb/s) with most “charging only” USB-C cables. That’s only really useful for a keyboard or mouse these days.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

This limitation comes up sometimes when people try to build out a zero-trust cable where they can get a charge but not necessarily transfer data to or from an untrusted device on the other side.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You forgot thunderbolt and usb4 exists now

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

True but pretty much the only devices that need those are high-end SSDs and laptop docks and in both cases you just leave the cable with the device rather than pulling it out of your generic cables drawer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago

You forgot thunderbolt and usb4 exists now

You can buy a single cable that does 40GB and USB4 and charges at 240w.