USB 3.2 and 3.1 Explained: What's Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 2x2?

What USB really needs is a bunch more connector types. We only have about a dozen so far. The possible cables is way under 100.

And finding the mating position by flipping them over by feel is too easy. How about 5-fold symmetry with only one working?

The consolation prize is that even if you have a nice simple USB-C to USB-C cable it might not work if its the wrong type for the intended task. There are 5Gbit/s, 10Gbit/s, Thunderbolt compatible, 3A and 5A and combinations thereof with and without identity chips. I've probably missed some too.

John

Nobody said you have to use it. Why not stick with firewire? That's more your speed anyway.

My Kia has Android Auto and my phone worked with it... most of the time. I eventually figured out why it didn't work all the time. Kia talked about "quality" cables. Turned out you have to use USB 3.x with Android Auto (at least in the Kia). It won't work properly at the lower speeds for whatever reason. I guess it doesn't know the cable is not 3.x compatible and looses too much data, eventually causing Android Auto to lock up. It was very frustrating until I figured this out.

Turns out it's very hard to buy a 3.x USB cable over the net. You have to ask for the specific data speeds it will support. Often they say USB 3.0 or 3.x, but are only rated to 480 Mbps, in the fine print!

Just to make the original issue clear, USB 3.0, 3.1, etc do not denote a speed. 3.1 will do everything 3.0 does, but includes the option of running at 10 Gbps (Gen 2 instead of Gen 1). A cable can be rated as USB 3.1 even though it's only Gen 1. Gen 2x2 is 20 Mbps, by using two 10 Gbps channels. So: Gen 1 = 5 Mbps max, Gen2 = 10 Gbps max, Gen2x2 is 20 Gbps max.

Of course any of these will also operate at any slower speed. The A type connector gets another set of pins behind the original USB 2.0 pins, allowing full use of all versions of 3.x and fully backwards compatible with 1.x and 2.x.

It seems like the most common cables are Type A to Type C. I'm not certain, but USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 might require a C type connector on both ends. I'm not sure the A connector has enough pins for two 10 Gbps channels.

These cables are significantly more expensive. They generally start around $15, rather than $5 for USB 2.0.

On a sunny day (Fri, 23 Sep 2022 10:06:05 -0700) it happened John Larkin snipped-for-privacy@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com wrote in snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Yes!

I still use PS2 kbd and mouse.. you loosers, you.

Is that on your Kaypro?

USB is fundamentally unidirectional, master-slave cpu-centric. That alone was a weird decision.

The c connector is pretty good, the first one that makes sense.