Is there someone who can explain USB cables so that I can understand them? Cables used to be easy; you plugged one end in here, the other end in there, and assuming the wires inside the cable were good, it worked. Now there’s too much magic in the cables. I have multiple Raspberry Pis that I use for different things (the main ones are 2 Pi4s and a Pi3). I had individual power supplies for each Raspberry that worked OK, but took up multiple outlets and space, so I bought a USB “Charger Block”. It has 5 USB-C ports and 3 USB-A ports, all rated high enough that it should easily be able to power all the Raspberries without even breaking a sweat. I took a USB-C to USB-C cable I had around and plugged in one of the Pi4s, and nothing. No blinky lights… OK, bad cable? I tried another cable, same thing. About now I’m thinking that all 600+ reviews (4.4 average) on the item were lies and was getting ready to send it back. When I tried a USB-A to USB-C cable, it works fine… now I start doing some playing around (still thinking I have either crap cables or crap charging block) and I find out that if I use a USB-C to USB-A adapter and then plug the same USB-A to USB-C cable into one of the USB-C ports, it also works fine to run the Raspberries. I can even use the same original USB-C to USB-C cable and USB-C port if I set it up like this: Charger(USB-C)->USB-C to USB-A adapter->USB-A to USB-C adapter->USB-C to USB-C cable-> Raspberry. At this point, I tried doing some online research and found out they do put magic in some of the cables, in the form of an e-marker chip, and the Raspberry Pis may require said chip to exist in the cables to work. I end up trying every cable I own and I find out I have one cable that can actually be used to power the Raspberry Pi via the USB-C port. So everything works, I just need to invest in better cables. So I buy a couple more cables, making sure that they claim to have this e-marker chip. Well, today I got the new cables, and they don’t work either. So after all that, my question is this: Is there anything I can do to ensure that the new cables I buy will work?
Statistics: Posted by dirdled — Sat Mar 01, 2025 6:52 pm — Replies 1 — Views 49