Tag: usb

Brand New Portable SSD 1TB 2TB External Hard Drive Type-C USB 3.0 High-Speed External Storage Hard Disks For Laptops/Desktop/Mac (WHL #95)

AliExpress and their stupid game rules finally made me (inadvertently) buy* something that I heard about at least 13 years ago…a full-sized USB hard disk that only houses a tiny USB stick!

*Ackchyually, that is not quite correct. Like with the NVMe drive of WHL #92 that took me a long time to get refunded (and it only happened via PayPal, since AE to this day strongly believes in returns to fake warehouses in Afghanistan), this one also ended in a dispute and now I get to return it in exchange for a full refund. This time, though, to a warehouse in Germany, so I unfortunately cannot keep it, but now that I know how to find these…

But first things first, this is the fake USB drive that I remember seeing all over the interwebs:

Funny back then, but it probably consisted of a fully working USB drive, just a very small one compared to the expected HDD. […]


Samsung TV custom USB jacks from IKEA? Nope. (#R18F1)

Super quick update on the Samsung USB port with the additional retaining pin: Although I usually don’t watch Youtube Shorts, especially not the ones from BigClive since I just watch the regular video, I recently stumbled upon this:

It’s a review of the smaller IKEA Smahagel USB charger (the one with just a single port). In there, he mentions an anchoring pin of the USB port that he doesn’t really talk about in the main video:

Around 5:44 where the PCB bottom side discussion starts, the USB layout can be seen. I’ve added a couple of arrows to the four regular USB pins and also the USB retainer (next to the L-shaped PCB cutout). […]


Samsung TV custom USB jacks (#R18)

Dear Samsung,

here’s a random thought: If you already know you’ve fucked up a device design, and you know it so well that your own folks have decided to create a custom solution because it’s obvious the end-user will tear apart a standard part in no time…then maybe (just maybe!)

  • don’t make that special part and fix your impractical design? Reaching inconveniently placed ports with minimal clearance for cables and devices is a terrible user experience in the first place?
  • …or

  • make that part available to everyone (you’re a big company, you can handle that!)
[…]

Fried Meilhaus ME-8200 Digital I/O card (WHL #75)

I can’t stand throwing away allegedly damaged stuff without proper diagnosis (or even working surplus items) at work. For today, I took home a pretty nice I/O card for final testing before sadly putting it in the bin. It’s a ME-8200B PCIe card from Meilhaus, a German test equipment specialist. It’s red (which makes it faster), and it retails for 680€ plus VAT at the moment, so certainly not something you’d throw away without second thought. However, due to our overpriced fancy standard clients at work, testing PCIe cards is basically impossible – you can’t do that inside those tiny cases, and I’d hate to completely disassemble one of those things (short cables to fit the envelope!), […]


High Speed 4 Ports LED USB 3.0 HUB With On/Off Switch Power Adapter USB Hub For Desktop Laptop and the CAT S61 (WHL #58)

This post is filed under “old, forgotten crap that has issues with recently added hardware”.

Well, this might be the new record holder for ancient reviews – but only due to recent events. I bought this USB 3.0 hub for 3.59€ with free shipping back in July 2017 (pricing hasn’t changed all that much). It was a purchase following up the 3+1 Gigabit/LAN adapter described in WHL #34. I still run this thing to support four USB3 keystone modules that are roughly 2.5m away from the mainboard. That’s not only difficult for the USB signalling at the highest speed setting, but also a strain when running high power devices such as 2.5″ hard drives or a mobile phone that needs a bit of juice. […]


USB ISO multiboot script – Ventoy (#P26)

Speaking of the GitHubs on the Interwebs: I’ve been using a somewhat selfmade bash script to make bootable USB media for quite some time now. It’s capable of running ISO files directly from the USB drive and also the option for a separate partition for some Windows WIM extraction, in order to offer bootable Windows install media. As I’m the only user and there’s not that much demand for running different Linuxes at the moment, that script is badly maintained and only got an update when like a new Ubuntu LTS hit the market. […]


DIY USB Micro panel mount connector (#P13F1)

Oh yeah, that has been sitting around for a while…

Back in June there was a post about two connectors (#P13), and there was one more similar item that just happened to be printed a few days after that post. As far as I can tell, I never made a separate blog post about it.

Well, as there’s another short post coming later today, here’s that little item as a double whammy for today. The USB Micro-B panel mount bracket thingy.

Unsurprisingly it’s closely related to the regular USB-A panel mount case, just a little bit smaller to fit the female end of a USB Micro-to-Micro extension cord. […]


DIY USB and SATA panel mount connectors (#P13)

Next batch of connectors incoming! (yes, I’m onto something)

I bet most of you are familiar with USB panel mount connectors, which (I guess) are a by-product of the slot mounted USB ports of PC mainboards in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Back then, boards had none or few USB ports on their back I/O panel, but often one or two available via pin header. So people obviously needed some slot adapter for them, something like this:

If you slap on a different connector on the other end and omit the metal bracket, this is basically what you get these days when buying USB panel mount connectors. […]


USB LiPo battery BBQ arc lighter – CCFL test device (WHL #47)

Fun with high voltages.
[NOT a sponsored post! They’ll probably do not want me to do that in the first place…]

This week (at work…), I repaired an old Siemens PLC unit with a failed display backlight. Good old CCFL crap that literally burns out over time. As this wasn’t time critical (unlike the last unit), I ordered some CCFL to LED conversion kit from China, modified that to fit the tiny display, threw away the crappy “converter” PCB and installed some homebrew.

While fiddling around, my mind wandered off. […]


DC5V USB PORT 10X10CM El panel Electroluminescent BackLight panel el foil el paper el sheet Led Board Display with Inverter (WHL #35)

Here’s another random thing from a colleague: A small Electroluminescent panel!

I was asked for an area lighting thingy that is slightly flexible. So unless one wants to bend the stiff backing of a mobile phone backlight unit, EL foil seems to be the solution. I’m not sure if that fits his needs, but I’m confident he’ll tell me if it’s not ;) I bought this thing quite recently on AliExpress (mid-January 2018) for 5.22€ including shipping. Yes, shipping cost have increased by a bit, but shipping times have improved as well. […]