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The average person I know thinks of USB-B as “that squarish one.” The existence of the differently shaped USB-B 3.0 doesn’t help with this. Micro USB 3.0 also really throws people for a loop.
I think I’ve used maybe 3 devices in my whole life that use micro USB 3.0.
It was common for like five years on external hard drives.
And stupid is, even while you are able to connect 2.0, many disk won’t work properly with it (shows up in PC but file transfer just doesn’t work)
Yeah that was one or two of the three devices
Didn’t the PS3 controller use it?
No those were mini-USB
I have used 4.
But 1 of them hadn’t implemented the USB 3.0 correctly in firmware, so it only worked well if I connected a micro USB 2.0, so I guess it’s 3 for me too.
Loss?
No, it’s
USB-A
USB-C
USB-A
USB-B
Wow and its an acab reference?? Sold
ACAB but expressed in USB connector types (that funky shaped one on the right was a short lived USB connector type B). I only had like one peripheral, a scanner, that used it.
EDIT: Lots of people pointing me to printers and music gear with those ports! I dabble in music and my little korg nanoKEY2 uses mini USB. And I’ve not bought a new printer in over a decade (laser printer toner lasts forever). I think I unintentionally invoked Cunningham’s Law here
As others have pointed out, B is still well in use today. But it seems nobody mentioned why: it’s because an A to A cable would be nonstandard and since there was no c yet, it’s the a to b cables. C to c is okay and there are funky A to A things which shouldn’t exist.
So short lived you can still find it on brand new printers
In case anyone thinks you’re being figurative, LITERALLY brand new printers. The Brother laser I bought last week is USB-B, as I expected it would be : )
This replaced the HP laser I bought in 2004 which was, of course, also USB-B.
Why change? It does the job. The cable doesn’t need to pass audio or video, doesn’t need to pass fast charge power, and sure as hell doesn’t need 80Gbps data transfer speeds… the bottleneck will always be the print function itself. Usb-c would be overkill. And Usb-b is made to be secured to prevent accidental disconnection for devices that typically dont move like printers and scanners, unlike Usb-c which is made for repeated insertions and easy release for devices like smart phones. Only reason the connector might change in the future is if they either start adding stupid features to printers or if it simply becomes cheaper to support newer standards.
That and if you’re replacing a printer, you can just use the existing plugs as-is; no need to go fishing behind your PC to swap out the USB cable.
Also some screens still use that one to act as an USB hub for the PC. There’s also a variant that is a but taller, but I don’t know what that type is for.
The tall ones are just the USB 3.0 version
The tall bit on top of the type-B houses the five extra electrical connections that were added with USB 3.0.
Maybe you’ve seen the same on type micro-B which gets a little extra side car. Same story there, the same five connections were added on the side.
In a type-A connector they are in a second row deeper in the plug, you can see them if you look in, behind and offset by half to the classic four in front.
These three plug designs all allow the old USB 2.0 type-A, type-B and type micro-B plugs to fit in new USB 3.0 holes, they will simply make contact only with the classical four pins and work as USB 2.0 then.
short lived
A printer I bought two years ago, a DAC a month ago. Its definitely not short lived
Yeah, AFAIK all printers still have these
Yeah I always call it the printer USB port. I wonder why it’s so popular there? Maybe it’s the USB connector that is hardest to break or pull off by accident?
My understanding it’s the other end of a one way USB cable. Normally the cable is attached like your mouse or keyboard, or commonly these days USB C, but if you are plugging in USB and it’s not USB C but the cable unplugs at either end, one will be USB A and the other USB B so you can’t put it in backwards like you could if they both has USB A.
Early android smart phones used USB B micro or mini, but printers have no need to keep the plug small.
Yeah, C had two major innovations: it was symmetrically functional, and it was symmetrically functional. Everybody knows about how A was kinda a pain because you’d try to plug it in upside down a lot, but A also was unidirectional. You never see male A to male A cables despite A being so common, meanwhile C to C is the default C cable, even things that would have used an integrated cord often just slap a port on instead
Maybe it’s the USB connector that is hardest to break or pull off by accident?
Yeah, pretty much. Printers and scanners are kinda the only common devices big enough not to need to use a more fragile mini-B or micro-B.
(There are certainly other more niche “big” devices that also use it: the MIDI connection on my digital piano, for instance.)
A screen I bought recently has this for the integrated USB hub, I think?
Every monitor with a USB hub and every printer I’ve owned for the last 20 years has had one. It’s used to differentiate USB directionality, for example which side is upstream or the “host device” and which side is meant to plug into the computer.
They’re moot now with USB C which is bidirectional; USB-A male to USB-A male is dangerous and not compliant with the USB specification, so they’d use USB-B on one side.
Wild, TIL.
Every printer for the past 20 years has used USB B
Hell, even my 3d printer connects to a computer via USB B, if you want/need to connect directly to it.
I don’t think I’ve ever owned a printer that had USB-B that didn’t also have Ethernet. The last time I hooked a printer directly to a computer instead of to the network, it was using a parallel port.
This guy doesn’t connect.
At least not for almost 30 years.
I think that was the last time I used a SCSI port printer with our family Mac. I know PCs hung on to parallel a little longer, but my first a win 98 machine had usb and a custom scsi port for my scanner and Zip drive (before I got an ATA internal Zip).
a short lived USB connector type B
Not short lived at all, it’s literally one of the three standard connectors alongside A and C. USB is an inherently directional protocol, so one side if the host device and the other is the peripheral device. The difference between Type A and B plugs helped enforce that directionality. Prior to the C connector becoming the new standard regardless of direction, all USB cables had both a Type-A and Type-B connector. (A to A cables violate the spec, and are an abomination).
The miniUSB and microUSB connectors are both Type-B connectors, just physically smaller to accommodate smaller peripheral devices. There’s also technically a mini-A and micro-A, but they’re very uncommon since host devices are usually large enough for a full size plug, and now USB 3.0+ Type-C connections don’t require a directional cable the same way.
I have a bunch of USB hubs that plug into a USB-A outlet and then give you USB-A outlets. Are these not cursed because they’re a hub?
I also have a switchable USB hub from Amazon that lets you send your USB hub outlets to one out of four host devices. I use this to be able to have my mouse and keyboard plugged into my desktop or switch it to my laptop, if I have my laptop plugged into a USB dock.
That switchable USB hub uses USB-A to USB-A cables to connect the hub to the host devices. What cable should it use instead for this purpose? USB A to USB B? And the hub would have four USB-B inputs on the back?
To answer my own question, here is a expensive version of what I’m talking about, which uses USB-A to USB-B. https://www.startech.com/en-us/usb-hubs/hbs304a24a
And here is the cheap version I have from Amazon, over $100 cheaper which uses the cursed cable… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHY8L11W/
I have a bunch of USB hubs that plug into a USB-A outlet and then give you USB-A outlets. Are these not cursed because they’re a hub?
The “cursed” thing is a male-A to male-A cable. A hub is fine because it’s male-A to female-A
Is there any risk of using the cheap A to A version?
So far the only downside I’ve seen is that the keyboard and mouse don’t work super well in the UEFI screen maybe one time in 20. And sometimes the keyboard would disconnect in other contexts, but that seems to have resolved itself.
I’m assuming for the $100+ the real one better be reliable.
Not inherently, but if you or someone else plugs one of those cables into the wrong ports, you could lose a USB controller.
What cable should it use instead for this purpose? USB A to USB B? And the hub would have four USB-B inputs on the back?
Yes. I have an older model of this one, which only connects to two computers, but this is even cheaper and connects to four. If you absolutely need USB 3, this one is only a little more expensive than yours and is built correctly.
Anything non-portable that you plug in to a computer with a USB-A connection is supposed to have a USB-B on the other end if the cable is removable.
I have a lot of music gear with USB-B connectors on them
And then you have the cursed non standard USB A to USB A
My cheap knockoff elgato has that and it still creeps me out when I use it lol.
Same. Music gear (although my recent stuff has started going C), printers and scanners since USB became a standard, older networking hardware, older external hard drives (most of them before USB 3.0), and every piece of medical equipment I’ve ever dealt with. It was ubiquitous from the time USB started in the 90s until USB C got popular after 2014.
until USB C got popular after 2014
Nonono, USB-C isn’t over a decade old…
…
Well, the good news is that it wasn’t really popular in 2014. It probably didn’t become popular until about 7-8 years ago and that was thanks to smartphones.
The Nexus 6P had it in 2015. Samsung was one of the last to switch over, and they still did in 2017. I’d say closer to 9 years ago.
You’re right as far as devices go, I was just adding a year or two because most people don’t switch phones immediately at release.
The other side of that is I’m probably a little biased because I was using the weird usb-b 3.0 micro connector (the long ass one) until a couple of years ago on external drives until it got too painful to open up my sample libraries on spinning platters.
So maybe 9 years ago and my view is colored? Or between 7 and 9 years ago depending on how you’re measuring popularity?
Yeah my 2021 hearing aids were microusb and that’s late enough I was annoyed but not surprised. I’m due for a new pair this year and they better be C.
USB 1.x type B definitely wasn’t short lived, I’ve picked up new devices with a B connector in recent years.
The B connector you pretty much never see is the USB 2.0 one. Pretty much all devices I’ve seen use the wide version of USB Micro-B or, you know, USB C.
Are you thinking of the USB 3.0 versions of Type B? 1.0 and 2.0 should be pretty much indistinguishable.
Right, that one. Sorry
USB B is still standard with audio hardware for some reason.
Because it’s not short lived, it has a niche use. Basically its meant for receptor devices, whereas A is for host devices
Wait until you learn about USB 3 with connector type B.
And of course USB 3 micro B, the mangled step child.
Such an ugly connector
It’s my favorite one.
This needs to be a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.
usb microphone, usb audio interface, midi keyboard, printer they all use it
ACAB: All Connectors Are Beautiful
Except that ugly “Lightning” one, flashing its pins all over outwards like a slag.
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Honestly, it’s oddly satisfying how universal those symbols are. You don’t need words—everyone just gets it.
I think the people getting this are in a strong minority. Most people don’t know that the archetypical USB port is called USB-A, and most people don’t even interact with USB-B at all
A minority, yes, but a worldwide one.
Printers use B…and i don’t mean just paper. Most 3D printers, crafting machines (cricut etc) and any form of arduino noodling will use B.
“How did you hook up your printer”
“Idk, the printer cable that was in the box”
“How did you hook up your 3D printer”
“I don’t own a 3D printer”
that will be at least 95% of your interactions in that regard
“How did you hook up your printer?”
“I called my nephew who does something with IT”
That’s because the endpoint device is supposed to have some manner of type B port (full sized, mini, micro) to denote that it is not a host device. Endpoint devices should not have a type A port for input, because double ended type A cables are not technically supposed to exist.
(Even though they self-evidently do, USB specs be damned. I have a flashlight that came with one, and its charging port is a full sized type A port. Using the cable it came with to plug two host devices together would be a bad idea and probably result in smoke.)
Most people don’t know that the archetypical USB port is called USB-A, and most people don’t even interact with USB-B at all
Perhaps most people on the street. I would wager the average citizens understanding of, idk, Star Trek, Linux and also USB-ports is a smidgeon lower than the average Lemmings understanding of them, on average.
Everyone that was building computers in the 90’s and 00’s
The best part is that the police would generally not get it.
Is that a penguin with a Glock?
Oh yeah! Well now I can’t see anything else.
took me a while, but glad I kept looking
That took me a hot second, but I love that!
Why doesn’t it at least have USB-A 3.0? One of those ports needs to be blue.
Is that the “thin blue line” I keep hearing about?
Suuuubtle. Love it.
Is it supposed to resemble a cop pulling a gun?
Nah, It’s USB type A, C, A, and B 😉
So in a way it IS a cop pulling a gun!
I can’t be the only one who thought that this was a cute lil’ guy flipping his middle finger right?
I wonder if some rogue hardware designer could justify this port layout on some mass-produced commercial device, distributing the message to unsuspecting buyers.
Printers (the most common USB-B device nowadays) could use USB-C for power. They never need more than one USB-A, though (and in the rare use cases the user can supply a hub if supported in software; also that tends to be on the front).
That’s genius, im stealing this!
I think that “ACAB” is a bad thing, however I have to admit that this is clever
I think cops are a bad thing and I agree that this is clever.
Cops are a bad thing… In the US. Also not all cops, even in the US. ;)
Over exaggerated counter example: I guess not all concentration camp guards were evil, wicked people, yet they still participated in a wicked, evil system that oppressed, incarcerated, enslaved and killed people.
Which makes them evil, wicked people.
You do not have to be a bad person or do evil yourself to be a bastard. Your support or even acceptance of a bad system is enough.
Which means all cops are bastards through their participation.
Unless the copies start shooting ICE when they attack citizens, I’ll maintain that ACAB.
Even those trying to change the system from within?
And yet, their actions say otherwise.
This is like saying there are “good” Trump supporters. There are people who don’t believe or realize they’re fascists, but that doesn’t excuse their fascism. The net result on society is negative, so they are all objectively “bad”.
ACAB isn’t about individual cop’s moral qualities, it’s about them as a whole institution enforcing unfair systems
And, as the recent FBI agent quitting over being forced to switch a murder investigation into something is not for politics, there are no good cops. There are bad cops and cops that quit the force. Good people don’t seek the rush of shooting others.
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