Hi everyone!
Over the years, I’ve started having big collection of cables or dongles.
Mostly USB-C, USB-A to Micro USB, USB A to C, USB C to A, HDMI…
I was wondering how I could know their specifications as nothing is written on them. Maybe through a Linux program telling me how fast they can transfer data.
I was wondering also if there was a way to know how much power was sent to a device when these cables are used to power one. For instance, I’ve noticed that my Steam Deck battery was draining when playing games with 15TDP and being charged with an iPhone charger.
I don’t know if it’s useful, but here are my computers: Steam Deck running Steam OS, Surface Go 1 running Fedora Silverblue, MacBook Pro 2012 running PopOs.
I don’t want to buy anything to be able to measure how much data or power these cables can send😇
Thanks in advance for your help.
To get too know the true spec you need special measuring devices. No software can tell you the true spec without knowing the actual inside of the cable. You can do a few test to get a rough estimate though. But that means testing all the capabilities and see what it does. Could be using the cables way out of spec that way however.
Well something like this https://github.com/meliorisse/CordIDMonitor or this https://github.com/connection-information-suite/usb-connection-information-menubar-linux or https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux sounds kind of useful for my case
This will tell you which types of “fast charging” Power Delivery a cable will handle and if the cable supports data, and will identify some types of electrical faults https://treedix.com/products/treedix-usb-cable-tester-usb-c-cable-tester-usb-tester-for-data-transmission-and-power-transmission-cable-testing-resistor-testing-type-c-emarker-for-usb-a-micro-b-micro-b-3-0-type-c-lighting-mini-b
And this kind of thing will tell you how much power is actually being transferred (but nothing about data transfer) - as someone else mentions, this also depends on the device you’re charging/powering, and the power source, but it is a more immediately useful number than what specification is supported: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807855183284.html?browser_id=c9623fd12fa5452c9941ee83c4bcb933&m_page_id=jrd5irtoihqcaaw419fcdda6dc0206069af12e5513
Clean AliExpress link: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807855183284.html
He knows how
Unfortunately there’s no way to actually know what’s going on with a cable without testing it and as of eight or so years ago you can’t trust cables to conform to the spec.
You should either buy a cable tester, not use high powered supplies or throw away what you have and buy cables you know are what they say they are.
Especially for power delivery, buy a tester. It’s cheaper than a house fire.
For something like a USB-C to C or USB-C to A, If you have something like an external M.2 SSD with a USB C connector and a fast enough port on your PC, you could see how fast a large file transfers. For USB C to C, most things I think should be USB 3.0 or higher, and you can tell whether some USB As are USB 2.X or USB 3.X by looking down the end and seeing whether it has that smaller fifth pin in the back. The color of the plastic tab in the USB can sometimes be an indicator, albeit an unreliable one as manufacturers are always screwing around with the colors. Blue usually means USB 3.X, black sometimes means USB 2.X, and white sometimes means USB 1.X. Any other color like orange is more likely to mean USB 3 than not, but not necessarily.
For USB A to Micro USB, I am fairly certain those will be USB 2.X. I am not aware of any micro USB device which operated at USB 3.X speeds. The only thing to watch out for are cheap cables with only power and ground populated and no data lines. But the easy way to test that is to just see whether a device is detected and identified at all by your PC through the cable, as that means the data lines are populated.
HDMI, I’m less sure, but if you have a high resolution/refresh rate monitor, you could try connecting it between the PC and the monitor and see what resolution/refresh rate options are listed, or seeing if there are visual artifacts or noise at the highest settings.
