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Why do printers use USB B?

bobhays
By bobhays
in Peripherals
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I was just wondering why things like Printers still use usb type B. Wouldn't usb type A work just as well and since it's more common the cable would be easier to replace.

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Because most printer manufacturing companies also own manufacturing comapnies for USB type B cables.... it is their evil plan!

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that would cause a male to male USB A, and people would try to use that thing in stupid ways to connect a laptop to another laptop.

 

plus, at least they don't use that stupid old ribbon cable that has a million pins anymore.

We can't Benchmark like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to shove more GPUs in your computer. Like the time I needed to NV-Link, because I needed a higher HeavenBench score, so I did an SLI, which is what they called NV-Link back in the day. So, I decided to put two GPUs in my computer, which was the style at the time. Now, to add another GPU to your computer, costs a new PSU. Now in those days PSUs said OCZ on them, "Gimme 750W OCZs for an SLI" you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was that I had two GPUs in my rig, which was the style at the time! They didn't have RGB PSUs at the time, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big green ones. 

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Because male A to male A is a very bed idea because someone will use it to plug two computer together and will wonder why they release the magic smoke.

 

 

that would cause a male to male USB A, and people would try to use that thing in stupid ways to connect a laptop to another laptop.

 

plus, at least they don't use that stupid old ribbon cable that has a million pins anymore.

ok that makes sense, good to know. Just out of curiosity, why isn't there a way for 2 computers to transfer files directly via USB?

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that would cause a male to male USB A, and people would try to use that thing in stupid ways to connect a laptop to another laptop.

plus, at least they don't use that stupid old ribbon cable that has a million pins anymore.

Do you mean whose pink parallel cables?

I think it's because type A is for "smart" devices - they can control other things and can take human input and B is for "dumb" devices - they get controlled by another device.

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ok that makes sense, good to know. Just out of curiosity, why isn't there a way for 2 computers to transfer files directly via USB?

Because as far as I know, the USB protocol requires a host and a client, and the two computers would argue about which is which. You need something to tell the computers which is which for it to work.

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ok that makes sense, good to know. Just out of curiosity, why isn't there a way for 2 computers to transfer files directly via USB?

Eh probably could with a usb network adapter. Simpler to use flash drives or a nas or something.
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Because as far as I know, the USB protocol requires a host and a client, and the two computers would argue about which is which. You need something to tell the computers which is which for it to work.

What about something that shows the other computer's drive as a network drive on both or just one of the other computers? That should be fairly simple right?
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What about something that shows the other computer's drive as a network drive on both or just one of the other computers? That should be fairly simple right?

Thats what i was thinking, I understand flashdrives work but then you have to copy twice and if the files are larger your have to keep doing it rather then set it and forget it.

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Thats what i was thinking, I understand flashdrives work but then you have to copy twice and if the files are larger your have to keep doing it rather then set it and forget it.

As far as I know there is nothing that does that available right now. there isn't really any need for something like that, you can do it with flash drives, it will just take longer.

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Human beings cannot be trusted with things such as A to A cables. I am one of those human beings.

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You could always use a crossover cable.

 

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ethernet-crossover-cable/

 

You can use a normal patch cable, auto negotiation has been on nearly every Ethernet device for 10-15 years (it came out in 1995, took a few years to become standard). Crossover cables were for WAY back in the day, or for specialized equipment where programmers got lazy writing the firmware for devices... like Comtrol, for instance.

 

ok that makes sense, good to know. Just out of curiosity, why isn't there a way for 2 computers to transfer files directly via USB?

 

Microsoft tried it, it didn't work well at all, so they gave up. Just  search for "easy transfer cable". IIRC, it ONLY works when you use easy transfer on both cables and let it transfer everything, you cannot pick and choose files.

 

I'm probably wrong, but I think the easy transfer is just a double sided flash drive in a sense. It pulls the data off one computer and writes to the drive inside the small box in the center of the cable, and then the other computer pulls it off the drive.

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Human beings cannot be trusted with things such as A to A cables. I am one of those human beings.

Yeah, you might connect them backwards.

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that would cause a male to male USB A, and people would try to use that thing in stupid ways to connect a laptop to another laptop.

 

plus, at least they don't use that stupid old ribbon cable that has a million pins anymore.

I believe that was a serial connector. I found a scanner in my house that had that.

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Yeah, you might connect them backwards.

 

More like plugging them into ports you should not be plugging them into.

Green With Envy

A build based on a children's cartoon

 

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I don't know the reason why type B is used. I assumed It had to do with either the avoidance/confusion of A->A cables and/or the robustness of the connector.

The A->A cables would cause people to plug to computers together, which would either do nothing, damage the USB ports or damage the USB ports and the rest if the system.

file transfers via USB A->A do exist in a bridge format.

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ok that makes sense, good to know. Just out of curiosity, why isn't there a way for 2 computers to transfer files directly via USB?

 

 

Because as far as I know, the USB protocol requires a host and a client, and the two computers would argue about which is which. You need something to tell the computers which is which for it to work.

 

Question: How does the thunderbolt bridge in osx differs from usb?

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Question: How does the thunderbolt bridge in osx differs from usb?

Thunderbolt is a completely separate standard, which could easily have support for host-client negotiation to allow the computers to agree with one another (or possibly even not use a host-client based protocol). Don't quote me on that though - I couldn't find a source to say either way when I briefly looked, so it's just speculation.

HTTP/2 203

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USB A is for devices that send out data, USB B is for devices that receive it.

I don't think it's that simple. If you plug in a USB-A into your computer and a USB micro-B to your phone, you can transfer files from the phone to the laptop. Like others said I think it's more to do with host-client protocol.

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plus, at least they don't use that stupid old ribbon cable that has a million pins anymore.

That would be a parallel cable that used to be included with a printer; none of this needing to buy a usb cable crap to install a printer.

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