Comment on USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 11 months agoInitially, the plastic inside the connector was white. They started to use black to denote USB2.0 devices, and USB2.0 rapidly became the standard. They at least tried to do something similar with blue plastic with USB3.0.
It’s basically the only example I can think of where the plug and socket are rotationally symmetrical without also being reversible. That’s the kind of thing where I ask “did you test this before you shipped it?” Thirty years later we’re still plagued by the damn thing.
MeanEYE@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Right you are. Completely forgot about that. That said, I don’t think USB1 was a standard for too long. If I remember correctly it went to 2.0 pretty fast.
nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
If you had Macs, USB 1 was around a lot earlier, and really only good for peripherals and HID for a long time. FireWire and external SCSI drives were necessary because USB 1 wasn’t even viable for anything beyond external floppy drives. USB2 was a boon to external drives and bigger thumb drives, but took a while to arrive at the time.
MeanEYE@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t think I had anything with USB1 in it. Even the early Pentium machines had USB2.
nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I built a Pentium 2 in 1998 and needed a separate pci card to add usb 1.1 (which was what most early Usb was) USB2 came out in 2000.