I like carrying around one USBC to C cable for my devices, but I don’t want to carry around a USBC to A cable for other ports. Is there a dongle that takes a USBC cable and converts one end into USBA? I need it to support at least 15W.

  • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    161·
    11 months ago

    First thing’s first: all such adapters should be considered evil by default. The only way to make a compliant adapter is with active circuitry in the adapter essentially providing an entirely standalone USB controller interface.

    With that being said, here’s an adapter which does exactly that. Back when I researched this topic in October I found that the linked adapter is essentially the only one of its kind on the market right now.

      • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        Male A to Male C is abolutely possible. It’s the Male A to Female C adapters which are evil. There is no pinout mapping that will turn an A host into a “real” C host and that’s exactly what a Male A to Female C adapter purports to do.

        In any case, if you know what you’re doing then all bets are off the table. Hack away freely because at the end of the day it’s all just copper and bits anyway. With that being said, anyone who knows what they’re doing does not require my permission to… vague gesture know what they’re doing.

      • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        5·
        11 months ago

        Like I said: in order to do it the non-evil way you need to cram in an onboard USB chip. Female USB-C from a Male USB-A plug-in is explicitly not possible to implement in a spec-compliant manner because of the pinouts.

        You can brute-force a smaller passive adapter like those online but it’s a devil’s bargain. Nobody targets these janky adapters when designing products. USB-C things will just break without any rhyme or reason because you’re fundamentally breaking the hardware contract and “lying” about the capabilities of your port.