this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (4 children)

the decision was made to go with a design that, in theory, would give users a 50/50 chance of plugging it in correctly

How could it be less than that? If it was triangular?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ugh those circular power cables that from the 90s that only had pins in one half....

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The PS2 (and AT) connectors keyboards and mice were largely using before USB were round…

Arguably still better though because you could just rotate the plug until it went in instead of flipping it back and forth 5 times to get it to go in. And they also had more reliable indication for orientation.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you could just rotate the plug until it went in

That was a good way to twist and bend up all the pins. Don't you remember how fragile they were?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I meant to add a warning saying I may have bent a few pins that way 😅

Twist gently…

😳

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They still are widely used. There are certain things that you can't do on some motherboards without a PS2 device.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You know all the jokes about getting usb's orientation right on first try, failing to push it in and trying the other way? Yeah, it was already worse than 50/50.

Honestly that connector always felt like shit. A tiny, easily identifiable mark/notch/whatever on both plug and port would have made it a lot better, even if it was still non-reversible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh god please don't give them ideas...