"USB 2.0 cable": BS, or the Real Deal?

My wife needed to replace her printer, and thanks to the SSS Gearhead Elite, decided on a Brother. The guy at Office Depot said she needed to have a USB 2.0 cable for it. She called me, and I said I thought it was BS - I have a bunch of USB 2.0 gear, and it seems to work with any USB cable that is a) conductive and b) hasn't been cut in half.

But then I wondered - is there some kind of magical quality about a laser printer that requires a magical cable of some kind? Seems like BS to me, but I figured I'd pose the question to the fabled SSS Gearhead Elite. Are we just dealing with "Monster Cable Syndrome?"

usb2.0 cable spec is exactly the same as usb1.1 cable spec. the difference for you and me is that the cables that do not say usb2.0 on them do not necessarily conform to the usb1.1 spec(!?!!) but will work 'ok' for usb1.1

your findings are correct, a quality usb cable is simply that, and will work at 1.1 or 2.0 speeds. a low quality non spec or 'barely acceptable for 1.1' cable will 'work' for 1.1 but not 2.0

Seems like I read somwhere that 1.1 cables aren't usually shielded.

Could raise the possibility of tx errors.

I'm pretty sure that those "premium" 2.0 cables are a "Monster"-type scam, and any old no-name 2.0 cable would work just fine.

http://www.everythingusb.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=809

This doesn't really address the question but is relevant to the issue. The scanner on my HP Photosmart All In One quit working. The unit printed fine and did photocopies but the computer refused to see the scanner.

I fiddled around with it for quite some time (un-installed, re-installed drivers, software, etc. you know the drill) and then turned to HP support who sent me diagnostic programs and tried to help.

For some reason at some point it occurred to me to try a different USB cable and damned if that didn't do it! I guess it was the first time I'd known a USB cable to go bad (must have been the transmit wire?), after all it hadn't sustained any stress or damage that I knew of.

When there's a problem with any gear, i always swap out cables first. It takes only a couple of minutes, and if that's the problem, I'll have saved myself hours of looking in all the wrong places!

It's BS.

I got my last USB printer cable at BigLots for $4.99.

But was it a USB 2.0 printer? Come to think of it, I'm not sure the Brother is. It says "USB 2.0 compatible," not "USB 2.0 required."

Guess I'll find out when I hook it up tomorrow...with whatever USB cable I have sitting around!

Yeah, that's what my new Lexmark says... "USB 2.0 compatible."

The one Lexmark sells for it for $20.00 is a 2 meter USB... pretty standard. Nothing said about it being 1.1 or 2.0.

Like any other cable, someone can build it better and charge more money for it. The same things that apply to Ethernet cable or AES/EBU cable can apply to USB cable - uniform insulation thickness and accurately controlled twist of the conductor pairs to assure even distributed capacitance over the length of the cable. But unlike Ethernet or AES digital audio, USB cables are rarely longer than about 10 feet, where its characteristics as a transmission line don't matter. Nor does gold plating on the shell.

Some USB2 cables (but no USB1 cables that I can remember) have an overall shield and ferrite choke to suppress radiated EMI. This might keep noise out of nearby audio cables like the crummy cables going from the sound card jack to the crummy speakers.

I hope the printer is working happily with whatever cable you dug up for it.

I was helping my friend buy his first computer/printer a few months ago. Bought the printer at Bestbuy and the guy tried to sell him a cable. $36. I questioned the price and gave some lame line. We skipped it, went to Wal-mart and bought one for $8 and it worked fine.

On a side note... he wanted a carry bag. Wal-mart's (and every place else) were around $60. I went to the backpack department and found a bag that looked almost identical to one of their laptop bags. $15.

I use a long, older USB extension cable for keyboard and mouse and it works OK, but it does not work with my korg nano-devices. So from my experience, I would say that there may be an advantage to a USB 2 cable for longer runs for data-intensive devices.

there is no difference in cable specs for usb. the differences you folks are finding is that many cables simply do not meet the specifications for usb but somehow work for slow speed.

if a cable is sold as usb2.0 what it means is that the cable meets usb1.1 specifications. there are no usb2.0 cable specifications.

It's BS, Craig.

ew

Yeah, that's what I thought. "BS" stands for "Bonster Sable," right?

That'd make a good sig...

ew

It's along the same lines of the people who sell 20' USB cables, considering that the USB root hub will timeout with cable lengths over 5m (16')...

ew

For what it's worth, I was at Target this morning and walked by the computer department. All of the cables they had were labeled "USB2" and they were all under $10. I think that what it really means is "Don't worry if you have something with USB2. This cable will work."

And speaking of cables, when was the last time you saw a Firewire cable in a store (those of you who still go to stores)? Micro Center has a few Belkin brand for $20 and up, but no cheap house brand ones. Best Buy has the Monster brand for about $40 and up. But I have several mail-order sources (who of course charge for shipping) where they can be had as long as allowed for $10 or so.

Well, a lot of people think FireWire is in its twilight years. It has been around for, what two decades or so?

It's BS.

I think your real issue is buying a Brother anything.

FireWire, on the other hand, has always been Pro/Specialty use, thus why you never see it in stores. If it is in its twilight years, people like Mackie have misplaced R&D money. I don't think they have, and I see FireWire as the communication of choice for PC recordists for awhile.

It's BS. I think your real issue is buying a Brother anything.

Actually, we had a thread here about a month ago regarding laser printers, and the SSS community had excellent experiences with Brother. They've never steered me wrong yet! Although I understand the Dark Side of the Force is that their inkjets suck.

I think Apple removing FW from several of their machines really startled people. The wild card is USB 3.0, and whether that gets out of the gate faster than FW800. As to whether companies have misplaced trust in FireWire or not, I was fortunate enough to sit in with a design team designing a new audio interface. They had always been into FireWire but a lot of the team questioned whether continuing to do so was a good decision or not.

"Always in motion, the future."

Just for grins I put an old D-Link USB 1.1 4-port expander in between my PC

And I have four audio interfaces that use it, all of which sound mighty good and which I'm not eager to give up just because some communist pinko computer maker decides not to include it in their computers any more after being the leader for, what, maybe half a dozen years???

{censored} this industry. Gimme my Ampex and IBM (Model B electric typewriter) back!

I'm sure you'll be able to get FireWire cards for some time to come...I still see adapters for parallel ports and SCSI. Just because a company WANTS you to upgrade doesn't always mean you HAVE to.

Take my ancient Epson 1240U scanner: No 64-bit Vista support. That is, until I looked around the net. Someone hacked the 32-bit driver/applet, changed (apparently) just a couple variables in a couple lines of code, and voila - 64-bit support, and I can run the scanner from my new PC Audio Labs laptop.

Yep BS.

Your printer needing to be plugged into a USB 2.0 port is not (if it's a lazer), well it doesn't HAVE to but it really is faster that way.

USB cable is expensive to (especially at {censored}ing office stores).