I found it at the dollar store.
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.
Is the cable considered transgender after that ?
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.
Today I learnt my sexuality is USB
Universal Sexual Bus?
It turn@ a usb extension cable into a regular usb
I guess that could be a use case?
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.
deleted by creator
wouldn’t that just make this thing longer? we’d still have the same problem
There are female-female USB extension cables. As to why those exist…
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.
Those still need to get plugged in to the device somehow lol
Yeah… honestly somehow I missed the female-female part 😂 I thought it was male-female.
Well then it’s used in combination with a male male for sure otherwise yeah O don’t see any use unless there is some weird device with male input.
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.
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…
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 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.
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.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go
In 2001 the directionality became kind of moot. Especially if you want to do attach something with an on-the-go host
An OTG setup needs all 5 pins of the micro-B connector. USB A cannot be used for OTG. If a USB-A port can act as a client, that’s not OTG, it’s a botched implementation.
Technically, yes… but life finds a way https://pinoutguide.com/PortableDevices/usb_otg_pinout.shtml
Sometimes you have a female to female cable.
You ever watch Requiem For A Dream?
ASSSSSSS TO ASSSSSSSS
LUSBian sex obviously!
I dunno but it bothers me how much plastic wrapping that fucking thing apparently needs.
Say gex
gex
haha, gross
Hey gexy
Gex 3D: Enter the Gecko
To connect two USB-A ports.
Basically the same as a USB-A to USB-A cable, just really short.
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.
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.
USB-A to USB-A cables do not exist
wtf are you talking about, of course they do.
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
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).
Show me where in the USB standards these are specified.
This is like saying that a building isn’t a building if it’s not up to code
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.
But those are actually part of the standard.
They cables and exist and they work. So being “specified” doesn’t mean jack shit.
They might sometimes work. They aren’t guaranteed to work.
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.
And there was a USB certified logo on these cables and devices?
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.
USB-A to USB-A doesn’t exist
*looks at old charger from an American device*
HOLY SHIT A CRYPTID CALL SCP
That’s not a USB charger.
HOLY SHIT AN UNIDENTIFIED CRYPTID CALL SCOOBYDOO!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
deleted by creator
It’s an Usb-A gender changer. It’s not that useful but you could use it to turn an otg adapter (female usb-a to male usb-c) into a regular usb-c cable. I’d rather buy a usb-c cable though.
Causing fires
I would definitely find a couple use cases for these
Not one that short but I do have A to A cord like that in use. In my case it’s with a KVM that I lost and AC adapter for but found that if I plugged in to one of the rear console connections it could get it to power on from the USB device. Cable it to a USB charging port on the front of one of the UPS and away it goes.
Many cheapo sata connectors need a cable like this(I use a male A to female micro b and then a female micro b to male A, it gets the job done)
But connector, idk
