When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2023, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2023, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
> Making USB reversible to begin with would have necessitated twice as many wires and twice as many circuits, and would have doubled the cost.
This is... not correct.
You can make USB reversible with 1 extra pin and 1 extra wire. Grounds on pins 1 and 5, data on pins 2 and 4, and VCC on pin 3. Then have those pins on both sides of the plug and a socket with a single set of contacts on one side.
That's BASICALLY what Apple did with lightning.
Then you implement auto crossover detection, (edit: Gah! you don't even have to do that just flip the flipping wires) which had been around for years and is dirt cheap, in the hub. It would have been like, six, more transistors in the hub IC.
edit: I completely forgot that reversible USB 2.0 plugs already exist and use a simpler (and cheaper) method. They just tend not to be so reliable because of the thinner materials and the fact that they're not spec-compliant so they tend to be grey market jobs made for the lowest price possible.
Here is one: https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Universal-Reversible-UR050...
No doubling of wires or circuits required, just a thin double-sided PCB.