ACAB but expressed in USB connector types (that funky shaped one on the right was a short lived USB connector type B). I only had like one peripheral, a scanner, that used it.
EDIT: Lots of people pointing me to printers and music gear with those ports! I dabble in music and my little korg nanoKEY2 uses mini USB. And I’ve not bought a new printer in over a decade (laser printer toner lasts forever). I think I unintentionally invoked Cunningham’s Law here
Every monitor with a USB hub and every printer I’ve owned for the last 20 years has had one. It’s used to differentiate USB directionality, for example which side is upstream or the “host device” and which side is meant to plug into the computer.
They’re moot now with USB C which is bidirectional; USB-A male to USB-A male is dangerous and not compliant with the USB specification, so they’d use USB-B on one side.
In case anyone thinks you’re being figurative, LITERALLY brand new printers. The Brother laser I bought last week is USB-B, as I expected it would be : )
This replaced the HP laser I bought in 2004 which was, of course, also USB-B.
Why change? It does the job. The cable doesn’t need to pass audio or video, doesn’t need to pass fast charge power, and sure as hell doesn’t need 80Gbps data transfer speeds… the bottleneck will always be the print function itself. Usb-c would be overkill. And Usb-b is made to be secured to prevent accidental disconnection for devices that typically dont move like printers and scanners, unlike Usb-c which is made for repeated insertions and easy release for devices like smart phones. Only reason the connector might change in the future is if they either start adding stupid features to printers or if it simply becomes cheaper to support newer standards.
Also some screens still use that one to act as an USB hub for the PC. There’s also a variant that is a but taller, but I don’t know what that type is for.
The tall bit on top of the type-B houses the five extra electrical connections that were added with USB 3.0.
Maybe you’ve seen the same on type micro-B which gets a little extra side car. Same story there, the same five connections were added on the side.
In a type-A connector they are in a second row deeper in the plug, you can see them if you look in, behind and offset by half to the classic four in front.
These three plug designs all allow the old USB 2.0 type-A, type-B and type micro-B plugs to fit in new USB 3.0 holes, they will simply make contact only with the classical four pins and work as USB 2.0 then.
I don’t think I’ve ever owned a printer that had USB-B that didn’t also have Ethernet. The last time I hooked a printer directly to a computer instead of to the network, it was using a parallel port.
I think that was the last time I used a SCSI port printer with our family Mac. I know PCs hung on to parallel a little longer, but my first a win 98 machine had usb and a custom scsi port for my scanner and Zip drive (before I got an ATA internal Zip).
Same. Music gear (although my recent stuff has started going C), printers and scanners since USB became a standard, older networking hardware, older external hard drives (most of them before USB 3.0), and every piece of medical equipment I’ve ever dealt with. It was ubiquitous from the time USB started in the 90s until USB C got popular after 2014.
Well, the good news is that it wasn’t really popular in 2014. It probably didn’t become popular until about 7-8 years ago and that was thanks to smartphones.
Not short lived at all, it’s literally one of the three standard connectors alongside A and C. USB is an inherently directional protocol, so one side if the host device and the other is the peripheral device. The difference between Type A and B plugs helped enforce that directionality. Prior to the C connector becoming the new standard regardless of direction, all USB cables had both a Type-A and Type-B connector. (A to A cables violate the spec, and are an abomination).
The miniUSB and microUSB connectors are both Type-B connectors, just physically smaller to accommodate smaller peripheral devices. There’s also technically a mini-A and micro-A, but they’re very uncommon since host devices are usually large enough for a full size plug, and now USB 3.0+ Type-C connections don’t require a directional cable the same way.
I have a bunch of USB hubs that plug into a USB-A outlet and then give you USB-A outlets. Are these not cursed because they’re a hub?
I also have a switchable USB hub from Amazon that lets you send your USB hub outlets to one out of four host devices. I use this to be able to have my mouse and keyboard plugged into my desktop or switch it to my laptop, if I have my laptop plugged into a USB dock.
That switchable USB hub uses USB-A to USB-A cables to connect the hub to the host devices. What cable should it use instead for this purpose? USB A to USB B? And the hub would have four USB-B inputs on the back?
So far the only downside I’ve seen is that the keyboard and mouse don’t work super well in the UEFI screen maybe one time in 20. And sometimes the keyboard would disconnect in other contexts, but that seems to have resolved itself.
I’m assuming for the $100+ the real one better be reliable.
USB 1.x type B definitely wasn’t short lived, I’ve picked up new devices with a B connector in recent years.
The B connector you pretty much never see is the USB 2.0 one. Pretty much all devices I’ve seen use the wide version of USB Micro-B or, you know, USB C.
As others have pointed out, B is still well in use today. But it seems nobody mentioned why: it’s because an A to A cable would be nonstandard and since there was no c yet, it’s the a to b cables. C to c is okay and there are funky A to A things which shouldn’t exist.
ACAB but expressed in USB connector types (that funky shaped one on the right was a short lived USB connector type B). I only had like one peripheral, a scanner, that used it.
EDIT: Lots of people pointing me to printers and music gear with those ports! I dabble in music and my little korg nanoKEY2 uses mini USB. And I’ve not bought a new printer in over a decade (laser printer toner lasts forever). I think I unintentionally invoked Cunningham’s Law here
A printer I bought two years ago, a DAC a month ago. Its definitely not short lived
Yeah, AFAIK all printers still have these
A screen I bought recently has this for the integrated USB hub, I think?
Every monitor with a USB hub and every printer I’ve owned for the last 20 years has had one. It’s used to differentiate USB directionality, for example which side is upstream or the “host device” and which side is meant to plug into the computer.
They’re moot now with USB C which is bidirectional; USB-A male to USB-A male is dangerous and not compliant with the USB specification, so they’d use USB-B on one side.
Wild, TIL.
So short lived you can still find it on brand new printers
In case anyone thinks you’re being figurative, LITERALLY brand new printers. The Brother laser I bought last week is USB-B, as I expected it would be : )
This replaced the HP laser I bought in 2004 which was, of course, also USB-B.
Why change? It does the job. The cable doesn’t need to pass audio or video, doesn’t need to pass fast charge power, and sure as hell doesn’t need 80Gbps data transfer speeds… the bottleneck will always be the print function itself. Usb-c would be overkill. And Usb-b is made to be secured to prevent accidental disconnection for devices that typically dont move like printers and scanners, unlike Usb-c which is made for repeated insertions and easy release for devices like smart phones. Only reason the connector might change in the future is if they either start adding stupid features to printers or if it simply becomes cheaper to support newer standards.
That and if you’re replacing a printer, you can just use the existing plugs as-is; no need to go fishing behind your PC to swap out the USB cable.
Also some screens still use that one to act as an USB hub for the PC. There’s also a variant that is a but taller, but I don’t know what that type is for.
The tall ones are just the USB 3.0 version
The tall bit on top of the type-B houses the five extra electrical connections that were added with USB 3.0.
Maybe you’ve seen the same on type micro-B which gets a little extra side car. Same story there, the same five connections were added on the side.
In a type-A connector they are in a second row deeper in the plug, you can see them if you look in, behind and offset by half to the classic four in front.
These three plug designs all allow the old USB 2.0 type-A, type-B and type micro-B plugs to fit in new USB 3.0 holes, they will simply make contact only with the classical four pins and work as USB 2.0 then.
Every printer for the past 20 years has used USB B
Hell, even my 3d printer connects to a computer via USB B, if you want/need to connect directly to it.
I don’t think I’ve ever owned a printer that had USB-B that didn’t also have Ethernet. The last time I hooked a printer directly to a computer instead of to the network, it was using a parallel port.
This guy doesn’t connect.
At least not for almost 30 years.
I think that was the last time I used a SCSI port printer with our family Mac. I know PCs hung on to parallel a little longer, but my first a win 98 machine had usb and a custom scsi port for my scanner and Zip drive (before I got an ATA internal Zip).
Anything non-portable that you plug in to a computer with a USB-A connection is supposed to have a USB-B on the other end if the cable is removable.
I have a lot of music gear with USB-B connectors on them
And then you have the cursed non standard USB A to USB A
My cheap knockoff elgato has that and it still creeps me out when I use it lol.
Same. Music gear (although my recent stuff has started going C), printers and scanners since USB became a standard, older networking hardware, older external hard drives (most of them before USB 3.0), and every piece of medical equipment I’ve ever dealt with. It was ubiquitous from the time USB started in the 90s until USB C got popular after 2014.
Nonono, USB-C isn’t over a decade old…
…
Well, the good news is that it wasn’t really popular in 2014. It probably didn’t become popular until about 7-8 years ago and that was thanks to smartphones.
Yeah my 2021 hearing aids were microusb and that’s late enough I was annoyed but not surprised. I’m due for a new pair this year and they better be C.
Not short lived at all, it’s literally one of the three standard connectors alongside A and C. USB is an inherently directional protocol, so one side if the host device and the other is the peripheral device. The difference between Type A and B plugs helped enforce that directionality. Prior to the C connector becoming the new standard regardless of direction, all USB cables had both a Type-A and Type-B connector. (A to A cables violate the spec, and are an abomination).
The miniUSB and microUSB connectors are both Type-B connectors, just physically smaller to accommodate smaller peripheral devices. There’s also technically a mini-A and micro-A, but they’re very uncommon since host devices are usually large enough for a full size plug, and now USB 3.0+ Type-C connections don’t require a directional cable the same way.
I have a bunch of USB hubs that plug into a USB-A outlet and then give you USB-A outlets. Are these not cursed because they’re a hub?
I also have a switchable USB hub from Amazon that lets you send your USB hub outlets to one out of four host devices. I use this to be able to have my mouse and keyboard plugged into my desktop or switch it to my laptop, if I have my laptop plugged into a USB dock.
That switchable USB hub uses USB-A to USB-A cables to connect the hub to the host devices. What cable should it use instead for this purpose? USB A to USB B? And the hub would have four USB-B inputs on the back?
To answer my own question, here is a expensive version of what I’m talking about, which uses USB-A to USB-B. https://www.startech.com/en-us/usb-hubs/hbs304a24a
And here is the cheap version I have from Amazon, over $100 cheaper which uses the cursed cable… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHY8L11W/
The “cursed” thing is a male-A to male-A cable. A hub is fine because it’s male-A to female-A
Is there any risk of using the cheap A to A version?
So far the only downside I’ve seen is that the keyboard and mouse don’t work super well in the UEFI screen maybe one time in 20. And sometimes the keyboard would disconnect in other contexts, but that seems to have resolved itself.
I’m assuming for the $100+ the real one better be reliable.
USB 1.x type B definitely wasn’t short lived, I’ve picked up new devices with a B connector in recent years.
The B connector you pretty much never see is the USB 2.0 one. Pretty much all devices I’ve seen use the wide version of USB Micro-B or, you know, USB C.
Are you thinking of the USB 3.0 versions of Type B? 1.0 and 2.0 should be pretty much indistinguishable.
Right, that one. Sorry
USB B is still standard with audio hardware for some reason.
Because it’s not short lived, it has a niche use. Basically its meant for receptor devices, whereas A is for host devices
usb microphone, usb audio interface, midi keyboard, printer they all use it
As others have pointed out, B is still well in use today. But it seems nobody mentioned why: it’s because an A to A cable would be nonstandard and since there was no c yet, it’s the a to b cables. C to c is okay and there are funky A to A things which shouldn’t exist.
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