USB TO USB CABLE
As you already know USB cables come in several variations ranging in length from just a few centimeters to several meters. Most people are familiar with the micro USB cable that was supplied with their cellphone and normally just refer to it as a cell phone charger cable. But this type of cable is not supplied by all cell phone manufactures. Apple and Samsung has now opted for USB 3.0 so by implication their is then also a generation 2.0 USB and obviously a generation 1.0 USB, which of course is most abundant.
Not to confuse you, there are numerous distinct differences among generations 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.1 USB standards such as colour, speed, dimensions, data throughput, compatibility, among other specifics. USB cables also comes in both male and female versions; and generally OTG Adapters / USB connectors / USB hubs and flash drives are also USB compliant.
Even though the size and shape of the USB connectors may be identical, it's quite easy to spot the difference between the generations by just looking at the colour of the plastic bar upon which the contact rest. USB 1.0 sports a white plastic color bar, whereas USB 2.0 has a black bar, and USB 3.0 has a blue plastic bar, however you may encounter the odd connector with the red plastic bar.
This is an exception purely to indicate that the USB will remain active whether or not it’s in sleep mode or in standby mode. Meanwhile the internal wiring between the older USB generations has increased from the 4 copper wires, to 9 copper wires in generation 3.0 and 3.1.
Having said all that, considering all the variations of USB, I needed a USB-A male to USB-A male cable, but didn't have one. But allow me to put you into the picture. A couple of months ago my H96 4k ultra Android TV Box RK3229 gave up the ghost.... the dreaded green screen hit me unexpectedly, within the first few minutes of watching S1E3 of Brutal: Taste of Violence. Lucky for me, I could lay my hands on the successive episodes in MP4 format, so I fired up VLC and watched it on my laptop. However, I still needed to resurrect my Android TV box.
So after watching an episode, I used half a toothpick and pushed it into the AV jack on the back of the TV box and engaged the reset button. After a few seconds the green screen disappeared and within seconds the android logo was visible on the TV screen. I though that was all that was needed, when suddenly the android logo disappeared and the green screen was back. So I removed the 5V power plug, held in the reset button with the toothpick and reinserted the power jack plug. After a few seconds the a menu appeared among which was restore to factory settings but wasn't willing to do that. Reason being, I bought my TV box "jailbroken" with every popular streaming service installed and fully operational. I was a silly not to make an image of the TV Box when it was still fully operational.
Anyway to return to the USB-A male to USB-A male. For some reason I didn't discard any of my cellphone leads when the micro-USB end became intermittent or when it just didn't charge my phone any longer. I'm sure many of you have had the same experience with these "cheap Chinese cables". Since it was always the micro-USB side that went faulty, I cut off that ends of 2 of these cables and joined them to make-up a USB-A male to USB-A male cable. Within minutes I was able to flash my TV Box with V88 firmware as I believe it is similar though not identical. I then loaded all the repositories I could find including the DSTV and Netfix ones. I also added Kodi version 18 (Leia) but for some reason my remote control didn't work so I reverted to Kodi 16 (Jarvis) and my TV box is purring once again.
If you know the resistor colour code, the wire colours are 0692. This is viewing the plug with the connecting pins on the insolating substrate. The leftmost pin being pin number 4 and the rightmost pin being pin number 1.
4 = +5V - RED
3 = +DATA - WHITE
2 = -DATA - GREEN
1 = GND - BLACK
Note that technically you may swap the “+” and the “-” signal wires, since the USB signal pair is balanced, the polarity doesn't matter, so you can just splice two factory-made USB cables together to make -up a USB-A male to USB-A male. I spiced the same colours together since both cable were of the same type. You may end up with 2 cables with different colour wires. Probably the best solution would be to do continuity test on each cable and connect pin 4 to 4, pin 3 to 3, pin 2 to 2 and 1 to 1. A USB-A male to USB-A male is a really handy cable to have for flashing USB devices so its worth while making one for yourself.
