I found it at the dollar store.

  • x4740N@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you think about it, this is the USB equivalent of a double ended dildo

    • Ook the Librarian@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Or turn 2 extension cords into a long one.

      But a serious answer is that these are sometimes sold in a kit of adapters that would let you change the head. Most kits like used a normal cord as the base cord, but some used USB extension cords as the base cord. So this is meant to be a replacement part, not useful in its own right.

  • Z4rK@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve used them for extension, as it allows you to attach a second, regular USB cable to it.

    • salton@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, these kinds of little gendered connectors seem pointless until you absolutely need them for something specific then they’re priceless.

    • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Well, what do you mean by “regular”? The cable would need to be female on at least one end, which I usually see in… USB extension cables.

    • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not that you probably need to know this, but for some other stranger: there’s a max functional length to USB cables. At work I remember pulling my hair out troubleshooting a printer until we swapped cables for something shorter.

      • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        And that max length goes down with each coupling.

        We have smart boards in most classrooms, but in an entire wing of my department the smart board doesn’t work. Reason? When we built the wing, 8 or 10 years ago, the installers fitted their own low grade plugs on the USB connection for the boards, before figuring out that they snipped the cables too short. Instead of running new cabling the installers then introduced another extension.

        Nobody cared to check it out before accepting delivery and my complaints went unheard by management, until it was too late to RMA it.

      • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That said, there are “active” USB extension cables which draw current from the power lines and use it to boost the signal along the data lines

      • Polar@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Meanwhile I have 25ft cables running my large format vinyl printers lol

        • sysadmin420@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          My large format vinyl printer uses Ethernet. TIL there are USB vinyl printers. What kind of printer do you have? Latex 260 here

          • squiblet@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            We had a 53" US Cutter and it attached to the computer by USB. If we’re talking about the same thing.

            • sysadmin420@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              He said printer though that’s what’s what threw me off. That’s a cutter. My bad I thought he was talking about a USB large format printer, I only replied because I’m looking for a slightly smaller printer for my smaller decals, and I’d be interested in a serial or USB printer.

              My PC is in the basement and I’ve got USB and serial going everywhere running different cutters, 3d printers, CNC, etc upstairs and down, also in the garage. Works great.

  • flakeshake@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Such A-to-A adaptors and cables always have been prohibited by the USB spec, but people built them anyway. A common usecase for “illegal” A-A cables i remember was connecting PCIe cards (especially GPUs and mining cards) externally to riser sockets.

    • accideath@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have an external 3,5“ HDD enclosure that needs a male to male USB 3.0 A cable to plug into a PC. Still wondering, why they didn’t use B…

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        That’s really odd. Why use a host connector when a client connector is intended for the purpose.

        Did they entirely miss the purpose of USB?

      • evidences@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I bought a breadboard power supply and the options to feed it power are a barrel jack and usb-a. Considering the size of the thing mini or micro would have made way more sense.

        • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          The ones I have go trough the onboard voltage regulator and you can use them to power USB-devices. I suppose they’ve skipped diodes and other protective components so it can feed back to the circuit, but I haven’t tested that.

      • I_Miss_Daniel@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I have a similar caddy. Many years old now. The connection to the host computer is a USB-A female, so connecting it requires a male to male cable.

      • nottheengineer@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        An OTG setup needs all 5 pins of the micro-B connector. USB A cannot be used for OTG. If a USB-A port can act as a client, that’s not OTG, it’s a botched implementation.

  • LazaroFilm@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I used to have a portable hard drive that had a usb-A/ e-sata hybrid connector and I had to use a USB A to A cable (or e-data) to use it.

  • Rand0mA@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Get 2 laptops, put them side by side with usb ports wide open and plug them removed together. Likely will short with 5v being fed both sides.

    But in reality its a usb coupler (plugging together 2x usb extension cables). Not a great lot of use from them in my opinion. I’ve seen shit bodged together in low budget it offices using edge case crap like this.

  • Ravi@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    It’s an Usb-A gender changer. It’s not that useful but you could use it to turn an otg adapter (female usb-a to male usb-c) into a regular usb-c cable. I’d rather buy a usb-c cable though.