USB-C hardware

id probably say that the weirdest cable I've seen is Internet by power. It makes sense, but it's just weird and freaks me out

edit: this black magic https://computer.howstuffworks.com/bpl.htm

Maybe less weird than best cable. One from the very old phones that don't end in one of the usual plugs but in a really big old-timey one. I'll fix it up, get an adapter and use that phone.

weirdest would have to be one of those proprietary phone chargers before everything went usb….
like the genitalia of some crab that had evolved its shape purely to be incompatible with other crabs….

I want one so much, but þe price makes my eyes water.

Not exactly a weird one, but rather a very interesting one - JBL universal USB-A cable. Works exactly like type-c in which you can put it either way. They patented it or something, so one doesn't see them much out there.

I build audio and video cables for movies and TV productions as a side hustle so I think the weirdest cable was actually something I made myself to help me test continuity. I have a female XLR connector that splits off so each pin is connected to a little pair of mini pitcher clips that connect to my DMM. I can either slide the DMM pins into the XLRF and use the pinchers to test continuity or clip the pinchers to my DMM and then have a whole host of XLR male to many other types of connectors "adapter cables" (as I've very intellectually titled them) so I can easily test continuity because just about any type of cable I could ever make.

I wish I could post a picture of it but Im currently visiting family in another state, far away from my workbench. Either way, Im pretty proud of my creation. Sometimes its a major pain in the ass to properly test continuity, identifying if the cable if effing up or the connector just needs replacing. This little kit i have built takes care of that for me.

~~BLE caberQU~~

I’ve had some cables with the same ends being identical. Like two male usb-a cables. Before the “great purge” I had a box set aside with some “idk what the hell these are” type of cables. Wish I still had them. Some were hand me downs from my father from his box of “idk what the hell these are” and were from the early days of computing.

Thanks for friend for hosting this giveaway. The USB C is a huge mess and cable testers are the only way to check the capabilities of cables.

Hey there, and thanks for being awesome !

I'd say my weirdest one is for the not-even-remotely-usb-C-protocol, USB-IF-rulebreaking usb-C extension cord I can use with my discontinued mountain everest max keyboard...

Its not really that strange but it's probably this "wireless charging" cable for my old sony xperia.

I just stumbled across this community because of my recent hobby work troubleshooting (and head scratching) USB3 port modes on a Macbook Air under Asahi Linux. I've contributed nothing to this community so I should be excluded from your giveaway. I can absolutely see the need and how useful the BLE caberQU would be for what I'm working on, so I'll be looking into it more anyway.

Just for fun, here's my "weirdest cable" contribution. It's probably complicated enough to be excluded as a cable though. Back in the 1980s dot matrix impact printers were the most common printers that existed. For IBM PCs they would use the IEEE 1284 parallel cable with a D-sub 25 male and Centronics 36 pin connector. This is all well and good if your computer sends printer traffic parallel on and using IEEE 1284. However, if you're using a Commodore 64 in 1983, it has neither IEEE 1284 or parallel ports! Enter the parallel to serial converter cable!

There were a number of brands at the time, here's a picture of one:

The output to the printer is that 36 pin ribbon cable with the Centronix 36 pin connector. The input is the 9 pin DIN connector that plugs into the Serial bus (proprietary serial version of IEEE-488), but the interface required power, so there's also a 1 wire connector (the white connector pictured here) to a PCB edge connector that plugged into the Datasette port on the Commodore for the 5v+ needed to power the interface electronics. I used one of these for years when I younger to use a superior PC 9 pin printer than the 1 pin Commodore printer we had originally.

I see these old printer cables as the great grandfather to today's FTDI cables where there is interface logic built into the cable (albeit a much smaller package).

I currently have in my possession an USB charger that seems to register as an input device. The second its connected to an android device the touchscreen switches to a mouse cursor. Also, not a bot. X) it also charges, but I suspect some kind of weird backdooring feature in there.

Hey, I have one of your BLE caberQU devices. I picked it up from your kickstarter.

Well done and thank you!

Good luck to everyone entering to win one. It is a handy device to have around.

Weirdest cable? Probably those USB-C to 3.5 mm headphone adapters. Strange kind of bridge technology.

Hey this is a pretty cool tool! I’m glad I came across it in c/All just now.

I don’t have any weird cable stories than I can think of right now, but I do find it odd sometimes when a device will only charge with a USB-A to C cable and not a USB-C to C. You’d think more power capability wouldn’t be an issue but turns out it can be.

I noted your AI-weeder-outer line and went looking for evidence in the replies but didn’t find any. So far so good :D

A proprietary network cable. Not crossover and not a patch. I guess the hardware manufacturer wanted you to buy their cables if you lost it.

No cables are weird. God loves them all equally

I see all kinds of wild proprietary cables working with legacy embedded systems, but the non-standard USB A plug - USB A plug cable is the most obnoxious thing I come into contact with on a daily basis.

usb to 3.5mm jack, it was to charge a water proof device, super flaky though

Every early proprietary cable to from old candy bar phones to usba. They were all bonkers

A millennium ago (well, okay - back in the prior millennium), i had an external TBU (tape backup unit) that ran off the parallel port. THAT was a cable I'm glad never broke because I had no idea where to find a replacement after the company (whose name I've long forgotten) went tits-up. I think those tapes held a whopping 4GB - or was it 2? Whatevs - long since consigned to the bin of obsolete tech.

A HDMI to USB-C cable that would not work in a laptop dock but worked when connected directly to the monitor itself. Would you know why this might happen?

I can't remember a particularly weird one, but the most infuriating cable I've encountered is the power cable for my Acer Swift 3. It's a tiny barrel pin that plugs into a poorly secured port on the laptop. The laptop has a usb-c port, but it doesn't support charging.

The weirdest one Im playing with now is an ugly hack to connect a raspberry pi to a lapdock.

Thanks for doing the giveaway! I don't have very weird cables to share about. Micro-AB cables for external hard drives are weird. I've also come across mini and micro HDMI, a slew of proprietary connector cables which don't really count, etc. But those are actually all fine and preferable to VGA cables that get screwed in so tightly they're nigh impossible to dislodge 😅

Microsoft's official Miracast dongle had HDMI on one end, and a very short USBA cable on the other end for power.

It came with a tiny, adorable USB extension cable that was no longer than the Miracast dongle itself.

There was also a small plastic spacer with female USBA on one side, and female HDMI on the other side. So you could basically plug the extender into the Miracast adapter and then use the plastic spacer to turn the whole thing into a loop.

It was adorable, but seemed pretty silly.

Any cable from a trade show. You know what I’m talking about

https://www.raphnet-tech.com/products/snes_to_megadrive/index.php

I used this abomination to play Adventure on an Atari 2600.

2nd place goes to the chocolate chip cookie scented lightning cable my wife had for her phone because why!?