Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

Does there exist a device that you can plug in USB and HDMI cables and have it tell you what features, modes, etc that cable supports? Seems like having something like that wouldn't eliminate all the problems but would make them easier to deal with by quickly identifying that the cable you tested is or is not appropriate for the task at hand.

That aside, I'm looking forward to running my laundry room off of a dozen USB-C connectors hooked up in parallel.

View on HN

This is my only qualm with all the different standards. I just want some way, any way at all, to tell whether stuff works the way it's supposed to. Either label the cords and outlets (via printed acronyms, or color-coding, or cryptic symbols, I don't care), or provide the information software-side.

I can't believe Microsoft and Apple haven't built this into their operating systems. Sometimes it's near-impossible to figure out what Bluetooth standard I'm using, or HDMI, or USB, and I feel like it wouldn't be a monstrously hard problem to solve, as long as the devices are already successfully talking to each other.

If you just want to know if a usb cable can safely delivery a certain current, then a cheap multimeter might do.

If you want to test whether a cable will work with a certain protocol at a certain data rate, just plug it in and see if it works. Because the alternative method[1] costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[1]https://www.keysight.com/ca/en/products/bit-error-ratio-test...

This seems absurd. Is there a reason why Microsoft can't build a feature into Windows that tells you what USB spec a cable is using? (And details like transfer speed, power, etc.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com