00:00SPEAKER[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:28SPEAKERWelcome to "Brad Will Made a Tech Pod."
00:30SPEAKERI'm Will.
00:30SPEAKERI'm Brad.
00:31SPEAKERHello.
00:32SPEAKERHi, Brad.
00:34SPEAKERWe're going to get to ranking shortly,
00:36SPEAKERbut I wanted to let folks on the podcast
00:38SPEAKERknow if they hadn't heard already,
00:39SPEAKERthat friend of the show and I think multiple time guest.
00:42SPEAKERI can't remember if we had him on once or twice.
00:46SPEAKERAnd my good friend Gordon Ma, who
00:49SPEAKERwas one of my mentors at Maximum PC when I started it.
00:52SPEAKERI end up being his boss by the end of it, which was weird.
00:55SPEAKERBut he passed away after having pancreatic cancer
01:00SPEAKERfor a fairly long time, just before Christmas.
01:03SPEAKERThis is the first episode we've recorded since then,
01:05SPEAKERand we're going to do a remembrance episode over
01:10SPEAKERon The Full Nerd at PC World, I think probably after CES,
01:15SPEAKERjust because scheduling is hard and a bunch of people
01:18SPEAKERare out of town for holidays and stuff.
01:20SPEAKERBut I wanted to let folks here know,
01:23SPEAKERbecause Gordon was on this show.
01:24SPEAKERHe was on a lot of--
01:25SPEAKERhe came on an October cast back in the Tested Days
01:29SPEAKERand showed up off and on over the years,
01:32SPEAKERbut has always been the person that-- one of the people
01:36SPEAKERthat I reach out to and talk to when I have questions about--
01:39SPEAKERwhen I have weird things happening with computers,
01:42SPEAKERGordon has always been the person I called.
01:44SPEAKERSo a font of wisdom, a rock.
01:47SPEAKERYeah, it's like he's the origin of so many things
01:51SPEAKERthat I hold true and dear, like, hey,
01:55SPEAKERif your computer just restarts with a black screen,
01:58SPEAKERthat probably means your power supply is dying.
02:00SPEAKEROK.
02:01SPEAKERThat is a truism that I hold to this--
02:03SPEAKERthat has served us well just in the last couple of years.
02:06SPEAKERThat has proved true multiple times.
02:07SPEAKERThat's fundamental.
02:10SPEAKERIt's always true.
02:11SPEAKERHe's one of the people--
02:12SPEAKERwhen I started at Maximum PC, even before I was full time
02:15SPEAKERthere, I did the doctor column, which was our write-in
02:18SPEAKERand ask people for help with their computer problems column.
02:21SPEAKERAnd he and I were the ones who realized
02:24SPEAKERthat every year in August, the letters we would get
02:27SPEAKERwere all, hey, my computer's black screening a lot.
02:29SPEAKERLike, those numbers would go up because people's rooms were
02:32SPEAKERwarmer, and the power supplies were thus less efficient.
02:35SPEAKERSo the power was sagging, and they were black screening.
02:37SPEAKERAnd that's where-- that's when that started.
02:41SPEAKERYeah.
02:42SPEAKERJust at the context of the show, he was our go-to CPU guy,
02:46SPEAKERif you remember.
02:47SPEAKERYeah, for a long, long time.
02:48SPEAKERCPU launches.
02:49SPEAKERHe has been the guy, because he is, in fact,
02:51SPEAKERthe guy in that space.
02:53SPEAKERHe has been the guy in that space
02:56SPEAKERsince the turn of the century.
02:59SPEAKERAnd he famously did the rant.
03:06SPEAKERHe did Gordon Mong's rant of the week on the No BS Podcast,
03:09SPEAKERthe Maximum PC Podcast.
03:11SPEAKERA long, long-- that started in 2006 or 2007.
03:15SPEAKERI went back, and I've been listening to a few of the older
03:18SPEAKERas they have.
03:20SPEAKERI actually uploaded the whole run to archive.org,
03:22SPEAKERif you want to go find it.
03:24SPEAKERAnd it's been-- it was fun listening
03:27SPEAKERto the first few of those, when it was just like--
03:30SPEAKERat first, it was just Gordon being
03:32SPEAKERgrumpy about stuff, which was kind of his public persona.
03:35SPEAKERIt wasn't exactly how he was all the time.
03:37SPEAKERBut then people liked him being grumpy about stuff,
03:39SPEAKERso he started leaning into it.
03:41SPEAKERAnd he got grumpier and grumpier.
03:42SPEAKERAnd then after like six months, he
03:45SPEAKERhad a moment where he was like, I'm
03:47SPEAKERa little worried that this is becoming
03:50SPEAKERa thing that is going to be a problem for me.
03:52SPEAKERBecause people are--
03:53SPEAKERI go to trade shows, and people are like, hey,
03:55SPEAKERsay something angry.
03:57SPEAKERLife starts imitating art, yes.
03:59SPEAKERYeah, exactly.
04:00SPEAKERBut he wasn't--
04:01SPEAKERGordon wasn't-- Gordon was grumpy about stuff, for sure.
04:05SPEAKERBut he wasn't a grumpy guy.
04:06SPEAKERHe was always the guy who was getting into good trouble.
04:12SPEAKEROne time, early at Maximum PC, when we were still
04:15SPEAKERin the downstairs in the Brisbane office, which
04:18SPEAKERwas where we were when I first started in the lab,
04:21SPEAKERwas like this kind of a big conference,
04:23SPEAKERlike a double-sized conference room with full--
04:26SPEAKERlike everybody else had drop ceilings.
04:28SPEAKERAnd the lab was all exposed ceilings
04:30SPEAKERwith stuff sprayed on the concrete and steel
04:34SPEAKERunderneath and all that, and exposed hanging lights
04:39SPEAKERand smoke detectors.
04:41SPEAKERAnd the benches were just these metal racks
04:45SPEAKERthat had three shelves on them.
04:47SPEAKERAnd he got in there, and I was like, hey, let's do some--
04:52SPEAKERcan we do air flow analysis on cases?
04:54SPEAKERPut a piece of clear plexi on the side of a case,
04:57SPEAKERand then blow smoke through the intakes and see which way?
05:00SPEAKERBecause at this point, this was long enough ago
05:03SPEAKERthat people were like, should you suck air in the front
05:05SPEAKERand blow it out the back, or should you suck it in the back
05:08SPEAKERand blow it out the front?
05:09SPEAKERYes, the whole positive versus negative pressure.
05:12SPEAKERWell, not even that.
05:13SPEAKERWe hadn't even gotten to that point yet.
05:14SPEAKERIt was just like, literally, is it better to aim the fan
05:17SPEAKERso that the air moves in through the front over the hard drives
05:19SPEAKERand then over the CPU cooler and then out the back?
05:23SPEAKEROr is it better to go the other way
05:25SPEAKERand have the back fan push in and the front fan suck out?
05:30SPEAKERI think was the point.
05:31SPEAKERThis was in probably 2001 or 2002.
05:33SPEAKEROK, that was barely out of the beige box era.
05:36SPEAKERIt was still beige box era, 100%.
05:38SPEAKERLike, we probably hadn't seen our first aluminum cooler
05:40SPEAKERmaster case at that point.
05:42SPEAKERAnd so Gordon was like, oh, I have a smoke machine.
05:45SPEAKERBecause of course Gordon had a smoke machine.
05:48SPEAKERHe always had-- somebody was like, hey,
05:50SPEAKERdo you have a karaoke machine?
05:52SPEAKERGordon was like, what kind do you need?
05:53SPEAKERYou want a CD or you want tapes?
05:55SPEAKEROr laser disc, rather.
05:56SPEAKERAnd so he was like, yeah, of course I have a smoke machine.
06:00SPEAKERAnd I was like, I think the smoke machine might set off
06:02SPEAKERthe smoke detectors in the lab.
06:04SPEAKERAnd everybody was like, well, we'll just ask forgiveness
06:07SPEAKERif it happens, blah, blah, blah, it's not that big a deal.
06:09SPEAKERAnd Gordon went up and asked the facilities person.
06:12SPEAKERAnd she said, with no uncertain terms yet, don't do that.
06:16SPEAKERI don't know if it set off the smoke detector or not,
06:18SPEAKERbut don't do that.
06:20SPEAKERAnd then we were like, ah, it's probably fine.
06:22SPEAKERSo we climbed up and put bags over the smoke detectors
06:25SPEAKERthat we knew about, missed one.
06:27SPEAKERWonderful.
06:28SPEAKERAnd filled the entire lab with smoke
06:31SPEAKERso it looked like a Cheech and Chong set.
06:33SPEAKEREverybody's having a great time.
06:35SPEAKERAnd then the smoke detector goes off and we have to evacuate
06:37SPEAKERthe entire building 'cause it's wired
06:39SPEAKERinto the central fire service.
06:41SPEAKERAnd the fire department shows up.
06:43SPEAKERAnd yeah, it was a bad, we got yelled at.
06:47SPEAKERI thought I was getting, I thought I'd been there
06:48SPEAKERfor a few months and I thought I was gonna get fired.
06:50SPEAKER- I'm kind of surprised you didn't get fired.
06:51SPEAKERYou know, at least the sprinklers didn't go off.
06:54SPEAKER- I mean, everybody's pretty pissed at Gordon
06:56SPEAKERfor asking permission and not telling us
06:58SPEAKERthat he'd asked permission and been told no.
07:00SPEAKER- Oh, I saw, well, you didn't know?
07:04SPEAKER- No, I missed that part, I guess.
07:05SPEAKERBut yeah, everything was fine.
07:09SPEAKERAnd I think at that point, Gordon realized
07:11SPEAKERthat they weren't gonna fire him for anything.
07:13SPEAKERSo he kind of used that to great advantage
07:16SPEAKERand was always fearless about asking questions,
07:20SPEAKERboth internally, like he was the guy
07:22SPEAKERwho would ask the hard question
07:23SPEAKERin the internal company meeting where they're like,
07:25SPEAKERwe're pretty sure we're not gonna have
07:26SPEAKERto lay anybody else off again.
07:27SPEAKERAnd he's like, sure, I was pretty sure.
07:30SPEAKER- I could see that for sure.
07:32SPEAKERI didn't know Gordon super well,
07:33SPEAKERbut I had the great privilege of getting to podcast
07:36SPEAKERwith him a couple of times over the last couple of years
07:38SPEAKERand livestream and stuff and kind of found him
07:40SPEAKERto be every bit as knowledgeable and welcoming
07:44SPEAKERand friendly and irate and all the other superlatives
07:49SPEAKERas you would expect, but like a true force, you know,
07:51SPEAKERjust a very fun, entertaining guy to be around,
07:55SPEAKERlike even off camera, like just very fun
07:57SPEAKERto hang out with him.
07:58SPEAKER- Well, an incredible depth of knowledge
08:00SPEAKERabout like computers and systems and CPU's especially.
08:04SPEAKERHe was our CPU coverage editor at Maximum PC
08:08SPEAKERthe entire time I was there.
08:09SPEAKERHe continued that at PC World
08:12SPEAKERand he's gonna be horribly missed by like,
08:17SPEAKERjust to be clear, it's not just, you know,
08:20SPEAKERI've been doing stuff at PC World for about a year now
08:22SPEAKERand meeting with vendors and seeing people
08:24SPEAKERthat I haven't seen in a really long time.
08:25SPEAKERAnd the first question they always have is how's Gordon?
08:29SPEAKERSo it's not, you know, he's the kind of person
08:32SPEAKERthat would write a horrific review of your CPU
08:34SPEAKERor give you grief for your failure or whatever.
08:38SPEAKERAnd the people who are doing the work
08:39SPEAKERon the other side of the table don't care.
08:41SPEAKERI mean, 'cause they know he's right.
08:44SPEAKERSo it's hard to argue with him.
08:45SPEAKER- You have to assume that he arrived at it fairly.
08:50SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, I just wanted to talk about
08:53SPEAKERa little bit, I'm gonna miss him horribly.
08:56SPEAKERIf, he did have medical expenses and stuff like that
09:00SPEAKERand has left, he's survived by his wife
09:02SPEAKERand two kids and his mom and his sister.
09:06SPEAKERAnd they, I know just,
09:10SPEAKERGordon was always really private about stuff.
09:12SPEAKERSo he didn't wanna do a GoFundMe for a long time.
09:14SPEAKERBut he let them put one up at the end.
09:19SPEAKERSo if you enjoyed Gordon on the podcast
09:21SPEAKERand you wanna help contribute to their stuff,
09:25SPEAKERwe'll put a link in the show notes
09:26SPEAKERand would love whatever support you can give, so anyway.
09:30SPEAKER- Our condolences to his family and friends.
09:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
09:34SPEAKERBut I guess now on, as Gordon would have said before,
09:40SPEAKERhe did, well, Adam talked about it,
09:43SPEAKERbut he was like, hey, don't stop doing the stuff that you do.
09:47SPEAKERHe was really proud of the full nerd
09:48SPEAKER'cause that was the thing that he had made
09:50SPEAKERthat wasn't somebody else's thing that he came into, right?
09:53SPEAKERSo he's like, hey, you have to keep doing the podcast, okay?
09:56SPEAKERAnd we're gonna keep doing the podcast here,
09:57SPEAKERwhich means we're getting to the very serious business
09:59SPEAKERof ranking things.
10:01SPEAKERIt's the worst segue I've ever done just for the record.
10:03SPEAKER- If anybody would have wanted us to continue
10:05SPEAKERwith an extremely dumb computer hardware related journey,
10:09SPEAKERit was him.
10:09SPEAKER- Yeah, this also, like, just to be clear,
10:12SPEAKERlightning in the top part of the list
10:15SPEAKERwould have sent him apoplectic
10:16SPEAKERand screaming at the radio the hallways through.
10:18SPEAKER- Really? - Oh, yeah.
10:20SPEAKERProprietary cables are the worst.
10:22SPEAKER- Oh, was that it?
10:22SPEAKEROkay, like, that I could see.
10:24SPEAKERWhat were his feelings on Apple?
10:26SPEAKERI don't think I...
10:27SPEAKER(both laughing)
10:30SPEAKEROkay.
10:31SPEAKER- I mean, when you, he didn't like Steve Jobs at all.
10:37SPEAKER- Okay, well, that's understandable.
10:38SPEAKER- Not for the reasons that people who are rational
10:40SPEAKERabout Steve Jobs didn't like Steve Jobs.
10:42SPEAKER- Oh.
10:43SPEAKER- He didn't like Steve Jobs
10:44SPEAKERbecause he felt like he was all smoke and mirrors
10:46SPEAKERand didn't actually deliver on anything.
10:48SPEAKER- Those are the reasons most people do like Steve Jobs.
10:50SPEAKER- Right, that's exactly it.
10:51SPEAKERSo, yeah, Gordon, not a huge fan of Steve Jobs.
10:56SPEAKERI think grudging respect for the hardware
10:58SPEAKERthat Apple has eventually made.
10:59SPEAKERLike, I think if, when I talked to him about, like,
11:03SPEAKERthe stuff they were doing with the ARM processors,
11:05SPEAKERhe was always kind of like, oh, yeah,
11:07SPEAKERthis is, they've finally done something good.
11:11SPEAKERAnd when I made him use a trackpad,
11:13SPEAKERan Intel MacBook with a real trackpad on it,
11:15SPEAKERhe was like, oh, this is,
11:17SPEAKERlike, I understand why you would want this
11:19SPEAKERso you don't have to carry a mouse
11:20SPEAKERwith you where you use your computer.
11:22SPEAKER- Yeah.
11:23SPEAKER- But, yeah, anyway.
11:25SPEAKERSo, okay, so somebody in the chat
11:27SPEAKERhad a really good recommendation.
11:29SPEAKER- Yeah. - I think it was FEV.
11:31SPEAKER- FEV, I believe, was the first person to suggest this,
11:34SPEAKERalthough several people came in with it.
11:36SPEAKER- Yeah, they tagged on, and they suggested
11:39SPEAKERthat instead of trying to put everything
11:40SPEAKERon a numerical list ordered from one
11:42SPEAKERto whatever number of connectors we have,
11:44SPEAKERthat we just tier rank stuff.
11:46SPEAKER- Currently 76, although that would probably get bigger.
11:49SPEAKER- That was an arbitrary number, I think.
11:51SPEAKERI just drug down until I ran out of screen.
11:54SPEAKERSo, yeah, they recommended a tier list
11:56SPEAKERwith the thing you see on TikTok and YouTube
11:59SPEAKERwhere you put things in S tier, in A tier, B, C, and D tier,
12:02SPEAKERand then that's how you sort.
12:07SPEAKER- I don't know if I should admit this.
12:08SPEAKERI feel too old to make a tier list.
12:09SPEAKERI don't know if I'm allowed by law to make a tier list.
12:12SPEAKER- Oh, I've seen people older than you make tier lists, Brad.
12:15SPEAKER- Okay.
12:16SPEAKER- So I think we're gonna do it.
12:18SPEAKERI think tier list is a good call,
12:19SPEAKERjust 'cause it doesn't make sense to sort the bad stuff.
12:23SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it does get to the weakness
12:26SPEAKERof the ranking format,
12:27SPEAKERwhich is when you have too many things to rank
12:28SPEAKERand the differences are too arbitrary.
12:31SPEAKER- The arbitrariness is where the magic happens, I think.
12:33SPEAKER- Well, okay, for some definitions of magic, sure.
12:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
12:37SPEAKER- But you can definitely get mired
12:39SPEAKERin just kind of meaningless back and forth
12:40SPEAKERabout like, oh, this should be two spots higher.
12:44SPEAKER- Meaningless.
12:45SPEAKER- VGA versus UHF, is there really that big a distinction?
12:49SPEAKERThe tier list is more of an absolute qualitative analysis
12:53SPEAKERas opposed to this relative horse trading
12:55SPEAKERback and forth, you know?
12:56SPEAKER- Yeah, so-
12:59SPEAKER- And I'm thinking this through in real time,
13:00SPEAKER'cause we've never done a tier list before.
13:02SPEAKERI guess it's a nice way to just be able to say,
13:04SPEAKERlike each tier can be as big as you want, right?
13:06SPEAKERSo like you can have as many S tier connectors as you want,
13:10SPEAKERso I don't have to worry about you saying
13:13SPEAKERthe lightning should be below our J45s,
13:16SPEAKERbecause they both get to be S.
13:18SPEAKER- So I think we did call this a ranking of connectors though,
13:21SPEAKERso I think that we should limit S to 10 items,
13:26SPEAKERso that then we can take that S tier and rank the top 10.
13:30SPEAKER- Oh boy, oh boy.
13:31SPEAKER- From 10 to one.
13:32SPEAKER- All right, so we can-
13:34SPEAKER- 'Cause identifying the best connector ever made
13:35SPEAKERis the goal here.
13:37SPEAKER- I mean, I haven't consulted
13:37SPEAKERwith the tier list governing body.
13:39SPEAKERThis does seem outside regulation,
13:42SPEAKERbut all right.
13:43SPEAKER- Okay, so I'm just gonna,
13:45SPEAKERI've added a new column to the spreadsheet,
13:47SPEAKERwhich is the tier column,
13:49SPEAKERand then I'm gonna drag down
13:52SPEAKERfrom what's currently one through 10,
13:54SPEAKERwhich includes XLR and BNC,
13:58SPEAKERand make that the S column for right now.
14:01SPEAKER- Okay, all right.
14:01SPEAKER- And then, let's see,
14:03SPEAKERthen the next three things on the list in order
14:07SPEAKERare lightning, HDMI, and FireWire.
14:09SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, so actually,
14:10SPEAKERyeah, you're getting to the first order of business,
14:12SPEAKERwhich is that we have to convert
14:13SPEAKERthis currently spotty ranked list into tiers.
14:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
14:19SPEAKERI think FireWire is not an A tier connector,
14:21SPEAKERbut people did rightly point out
14:23SPEAKERit was way faster than USB at the time,
14:25SPEAKERand it provided power too,
14:26SPEAKERwhich was kinda nice. - Like a lot.
14:27SPEAKERYeah, it was a great thread on the Discord for this episode,
14:31SPEAKER'cause there were a lot of factoids coming in,
14:33SPEAKERlike FireWire could do like 15 watts
14:34SPEAKERor something pretty beefy.
14:36SPEAKER- The problem with it was it wasn't big enough
14:38SPEAKERto run an actual camera off of,
14:40SPEAKERso it wasn't like you could charge your camera off of it
14:42SPEAKERor something like that,
14:43SPEAKERbecause most of the cameras that used FireWire
14:44SPEAKERprobably had external batteries
14:46SPEAKERthat docked into external battery chargers.
14:48SPEAKER- Was it at least enough to run the camera
14:52SPEAKERto dump whatever was on the camera, though,
14:53SPEAKERwithout external power?
14:54SPEAKER- No, you still had to have a battery or power,
14:56SPEAKER'cause a lot of the cameras at that point
14:57SPEAKERwere still DV tape.
14:59SPEAKER- Okay, or mechanical. - So they had mechanical stuff.
15:01SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah.
15:03SPEAKER- I don't think this is a diss on FireWire,
15:05SPEAKERbut Tyler W. in the--
15:08SPEAKER- Yeah, love Tyler.
15:09SPEAKER- Did you see his story about FireWire ports dying at E3?
15:13SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
15:14SPEAKER- I'm pretty sure I was there for that.
15:16SPEAKER- You were there for that one.
15:17SPEAKER- Yeah, in fact, our time at GameSpot
15:19SPEAKERoverlapped pretty accurately.
15:24SPEAKER- Yeah. - I don't remember
15:24SPEAKERwhat year that was, and I don't remember
15:27SPEAKERwhat they did about it.
15:28SPEAKERWe should get him to fill in some more details.
15:31SPEAKERMy memory is a bit spotty at this point,
15:32SPEAKERbut the upshot is I can't remember
15:34SPEAKERwhat exactly the electrical conditions were,
15:36SPEAKERbut every video editor at GameSpot
15:39SPEAKERhad put all their editing computers on the mains
15:42SPEAKERin the booth. - Oh, no.
15:43SPEAKER- While the teamsters were still working on,
15:47SPEAKERbasically the union guys were still working
15:49SPEAKERon building up the show floor.
15:50SPEAKER- So stuff was sagging?
15:52SPEAKER- I guess it was a sag or a surge or something.
15:53SPEAKERI don't know what happened.
15:54SPEAKERAgain, I don't know what the electrical conditions
15:56SPEAKERwere exactly, but every-- - Things went bad.
15:58SPEAKER- Basically every FireWire port on every editing rig
16:01SPEAKERthat was on that chain at the GameSpot E3 booth
16:05SPEAKERgot fried all at once, and that was how they dumped footage
16:07SPEAKERfrom their cameras.
16:08SPEAKER- Oh my God.
16:09SPEAKER- Like the day before E3 started.
16:11SPEAKERI don't remember what they did about it, but it was bad.
16:14SPEAKER- Okay, so I think FireWire is the start of B tier.
16:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't-- - Is my proposal.
16:19SPEAKER- I don't think that's a knock against FireWire as such,
16:22SPEAKERto be clear.
16:23SPEAKER- No, I think FireWire's good.
16:24SPEAKERI think it's a solid A, a solid B.
16:26SPEAKER- Okay, so-- - Maybe it's an A.
16:27SPEAKERWho knows, it might move up.
16:28SPEAKER- Does that mean lightning and HDMI are A tier then?
16:31SPEAKER- I think lightning and HDMI feel A tier to me,
16:33SPEAKERbut you could make your case for moving lightning up,
16:34SPEAKERand I'm gonna just keep it down where it is.
16:36SPEAKER- Okay, I should not appeal to populism here.
16:39SPEAKERI will try to resist doing that,
16:41SPEAKERbut there was a lot of pro-lightning sentiment
16:43SPEAKERon the Discord.
16:44SPEAKER- Well, those people have all been banned,
16:45SPEAKERand we won't be hearing from their like again, so.
16:50SPEAKER- You know, even I might not argue
16:51SPEAKERthat lightning deserves S tier.
16:53SPEAKERMan, this is so much easier than number breaking.
16:57SPEAKER- It is an easier process.
17:00SPEAKER- I think I would be quite happy with lightning and A.
17:02SPEAKERActually, I think lightning's pretty good, ultimately.
17:05SPEAKER- Okay, I'll move lightning up,
17:06SPEAKERand when we get to the point where we're out,
17:08SPEAKERI'll put it right at the bottom of that list
17:09SPEAKERso that when things need to get bumped down a notch,
17:12SPEAKERthen they can.
17:13SPEAKERNo problem.
17:15SPEAKERI think B is FireWire USB3 type B, the tall B,
17:20SPEAKERand USB type B.
17:22SPEAKER- Yes, appropriate.
17:23SPEAKER- And then it stops before you get to the 30 pin Apple dock.
17:27SPEAKER- Yeah, although.
17:29SPEAKER- That thing is pretty useful.
17:30SPEAKERIt has analog, it has digital, it does power.
17:32SPEAKERIt's really, really janky.
17:33SPEAKERIt breaks easily, the 30 pin.
17:36SPEAKERI don't think I ever owned a device
17:38SPEAKERthat had a 30 pin on it, so I can't speak to it.
17:40SPEAKER- You didn't have a phone, an iPhone before the five?
17:43SPEAKER- Oh, wait, no, that's right, duh.
17:44SPEAKERYes, I do have a, in fact,
17:46SPEAKERI've got a 3G sitting in this drawer, hang on.
17:50SPEAKER- The female end of it's not the problem.
17:51SPEAKERThe male end is the problem.
17:54SPEAKERIt's always the male end that's the problem.
17:55SPEAKER- I'm reaching into my graveyard of.
17:57SPEAKER- Is it stolen?
17:58SPEAKER- All of my old cell phones
18:00SPEAKERare just in this drawer right next to me.
18:02SPEAKER- You know, if I still had a site
18:04SPEAKERthat did video about phones.
18:06SPEAKERJesus, that's a stack of phones.
18:08SPEAKERI would go, I would take the oldest phone
18:10SPEAKERthat you have there into T-Mobile
18:12SPEAKERand be like, hey, I wanna trade in my phone
18:13SPEAKERand get the full, 'cause they do a deal right now
18:16SPEAKERwhere it's like, trade in any phone,
18:19SPEAKERand you get a full ass new phone.
18:21SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.
18:22SPEAKER- 15 Pro Max.
18:23SPEAKER- Here's my 3G, it does, in fact.
18:25SPEAKER- As we all know, baby phone for babies.
18:28SPEAKER- 30 pin connector on it.
18:30SPEAKERHere's my five.
18:32SPEAKER- I think the five is still my favorite.
18:34SPEAKER- I love the five, man.
18:35SPEAKERJust like, we were really derailing this podcast.
18:38SPEAKER- We gotta focus, man, we haven't ranked anything yet.
18:40SPEAKER- Holding this iPhone five in my hand
18:42SPEAKERmakes me realize or remember how good the iPhone five was.
18:45SPEAKER- iPhone five's a good size phone.
18:47SPEAKERI don't think my eyes could use it anymore.
18:49SPEAKER- I'm trying to remember how flimsy the 30 pin was.
18:53SPEAKERWasn't it, it was prone to breakage, right?
18:57SPEAKER- So the problem with the 30 pin is it's one way.
19:00SPEAKERIt wasn't reversible.
19:01SPEAKER- Okay.
19:02SPEAKER- And if you used it in any way
19:04SPEAKERthat put any kind of flex on the connector,
19:07SPEAKERthen it eventually would wear out really quickly.
19:09SPEAKER- Sure.
19:10SPEAKER- So if you had a dock in your car, for example,
19:12SPEAKERyou jocked into, you couldn't,
19:14SPEAKERit seemed like you could just chalk it into the dock,
19:16SPEAKERbut not really, is the thing.
19:19SPEAKER- Sure.
19:20SPEAKER- So I think that's a C tier.
19:22SPEAKERIt was also huge.
19:24SPEAKERAnd it was another proprietary cable.
19:26SPEAKERI feel like if it's on the edge,
19:27SPEAKERthen the proprietaryness always should knock it down.
19:30SPEAKER- I might, well, we can save this.
19:33SPEAKER- We can put it in B.
19:33SPEAKER- No, I might argue it goes in D.
19:36SPEAKER- Oh, so then where does D start?
19:38SPEAKEROkay, so you have to be micro B, wide micro.
19:40SPEAKER- Hang on, is there no F tier in this system?
19:45SPEAKER- I mean, we can make an F tier if you want.
19:46SPEAKERThe rules, there's no governing body of tiers.
19:48SPEAKER- I'm sitting here looking at 12.
19:50SPEAKER- The tier breaker does not put an F in by default.
19:54SPEAKER- It would be nice to get this
19:54SPEAKERinto the traditional format at some point.
19:56SPEAKERSo I'm gonna say we should add here
19:58SPEAKERto the accepted guidelines.
20:00SPEAKERThere is no F tier on tiermaker.com.
20:02SPEAKER- I'm looking at Smasher Pass Video Game Edition
20:05SPEAKERand seeing how they rank stuff.
20:07SPEAKERThey have an F, they have an E too, that's madness.
20:11SPEAKER- Oh wait, can you just add tiers willy nilly?
20:13SPEAKER- Yeah, you can add tiers if you want.
20:14SPEAKER- Oh, well, okay.
20:16SPEAKER- TierMaker Live most voted is
20:18SPEAKERmost definitive cartoon bad-ass,
20:21SPEAKERpersonal faves SA, oh, there's too many here.
20:25SPEAKER- Oh, you can, in fact, add as many tiers as you want.
20:28SPEAKER- Yeah, I need to know what like
20:29SPEAKERthe all-time best tier ranking is.
20:32SPEAKERWe're not actually doing a tier maker thing
20:34SPEAKERjust 'cause we're not doing a video,
20:36SPEAKERso it didn't make sense.
20:39SPEAKER1,000 video games, nope, that's a 10 out of 10.
20:42SPEAKERI think we can do whatever we want.
20:43SPEAKERWe can have an F, we can not have an F.
20:45SPEAKER- Oh, you can even change all kinds of,
20:48SPEAKERjust any color you want.
20:49SPEAKER- You can change the labels, you can change the colors.
20:52SPEAKERGet buck wild if you want.
20:53SPEAKER- I've added both E and F to this tier list
20:56SPEAKERbut they're out of order, E is somehow below F.
20:59SPEAKER- Oh, that's bad.
21:01SPEAKEROkay, so you think 30-pin dock is the start of D.
21:07SPEAKERI'm okay with that.
21:08SPEAKER- We can leave it at C for now.
21:11SPEAKER- No, let's make those hard cuts now while it's easier.
21:14SPEAKER- I'm mostly just thinking about how kind of unwieldy
21:17SPEAKERit is physically and prone to--
21:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it's a bad connection too, Brad,
21:21SPEAKERjust like lightning.
21:23SPEAKER- What about USB micro three B, USB three micro B,
21:26SPEAKERthe wide micro?
21:28SPEAKER- I think that's probably fine at D.
21:30SPEAKER- You think it's a D or an F?
21:32SPEAKER- That's the one, to remind people,
21:33SPEAKERthat's the one that's the regular micro USB
21:35SPEAKERwith the little extra notch to the side.
21:38SPEAKER- Yeah, the extra notch is for power, it turns out.
21:40SPEAKER- Is that the case?
21:41SPEAKERI thought I remembered people chiming in saying
21:43SPEAKERthat was not the case, but I would be wrong about that.
21:46SPEAKERIt is backwards compatible though, I believe.
21:48SPEAKER- Well, now I'm gonna go look,
21:49SPEAKER'cause I thought the chat said it was for power.
21:52SPEAKERI don't know why I'm calling in chat also.
21:54SPEAKERTom, who I guess who's from Australia,
21:58SPEAKERI see you 'cause I'm on PC and I don't see the flag.
22:01SPEAKER- I prefer it at this point, actually.
22:03SPEAKER- Really?
22:03SPEAKER- I have not soapboxed about this.
22:06SPEAKER- We've talked about this before, I think.
22:07SPEAKER- Every operating system on earth should let you mouse over
22:09SPEAKERor click on or whatever the little flag emoji is
22:12SPEAKERto figure out what country they're from,
22:13SPEAKERbecause I have not memorized every 197 flags on earth
22:17SPEAKERor whatever, so I prefer,
22:18SPEAKERI'd rather get the initials, honestly.
22:20SPEAKER- The weird thing for me is that when I look at people,
22:22SPEAKERwhen I look at Discord on the iPhone
22:24SPEAKERversus when I look at it on PC,
22:25SPEAKERI think of these as two different people,
22:27SPEAKER'cause I see Sted GB on the PC,
22:30SPEAKERand that to me is a different person
22:32SPEAKERthan Sted with the flag.
22:33SPEAKERAnyway.
22:34SPEAKER- To be clear, I know an Australian flag behind.
22:36SPEAKER- Yeah, sure you do, Brad.
22:38SPEAKER- But there are a lot of flags.
22:39SPEAKER- Yeah, but anyway, Tom pointed out that the wide micro
22:43SPEAKERis for speeds, not power.
22:45SPEAKER- Okay.
22:46SPEAKER- So, good call.
22:48SPEAKERAcademic distinction for the purposes of ranking,
22:51SPEAKERhowever, I think.
22:52SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I don't think it matters.
22:53SPEAKERI think it still sucks.
22:54SPEAKERSo, is it a D or an F is the question?
22:57SPEAKER- Well, are we doing F?
22:58SPEAKERNot to just make this whole thing
22:59SPEAKERabout coming up with rules for this thing.
23:01SPEAKER- I mean, I feel like having an F,
23:02SPEAKERI feel like having a real insult-to-injury category
23:05SPEAKERis good, right?
23:06SPEAKER- You're right, we should guess a total failure category,
23:10SPEAKERabsolutely.
23:11SPEAKER- Like, PS2 port definitely feels like an F category.
23:14SPEAKERI don't know if the USB wide micro is in the same spot.
23:17SPEAKER- Not to just relitigate the ports we already ranked,
23:20SPEAKERalthough we are converting here,
23:21SPEAKERso I guess we kind of have to,
23:22SPEAKERbut I would say for how much the PS2 port
23:27SPEAKERimproved on the old serial,
23:29SPEAKERcan I remember having to use a serial connection
23:31SPEAKERfor your mouse?
23:32SPEAKER- Yeah, you could plug that in and not crash your computer,
23:35SPEAKERnot break your motherboard.
23:36SPEAKER- Fair, but I don't know, PS2 port still felt
23:41SPEAKERlike an improvement over that.
23:42SPEAKER- It had a clear up and down, unlike the PS2 port.
23:45SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, it sampled so slowly though.
23:49SPEAKERLike, so I remember, my memory of serial mouse
23:51SPEAKERis that the input was extremely jittery.
23:53SPEAKER- That's true.
23:54SPEAKER- And was not fun to use from that standpoint.
23:57SPEAKER- Probably your computer was slow though.
23:59SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe.
24:00SPEAKER- Also, remember how good the old AT keyboard port was?
24:06SPEAKERThe big chonky one?
24:07SPEAKER- I don't know if I ever used one.
24:08SPEAKER- Oh man, it's so good.
24:10SPEAKER- I guess our first family computer was pretty ATX
24:13SPEAKERnow that I think about it,
24:14SPEAKERso I probably did forgive anything
24:16SPEAKERif we still had that computer, but.
24:18SPEAKER- Well, I think the PS2, I think we put it at the bottom.
24:22SPEAKERWe put it at spot 76.
24:23SPEAKER- Yeah.
24:24SPEAKER- I think to me that says F tier.
24:26SPEAKERThat's the question, does wide micro also mean F tier?
24:30SPEAKER- I'd say that's D for now.
24:32SPEAKER- Okay, D for now.
24:33SPEAKER- All right, okay, we should rank some new cables.
24:36SPEAKER- Now we can, yeah, now we can rank new cables.
24:37SPEAKERYou wanna pick one?
24:38SPEAKER- Sure.
24:39SPEAKER- I feel like I've been doing a lot of talking.
24:40SPEAKEROkay, well, my eyes just landed on TOSLINK.
24:44SPEAKER- Ooh.
24:45SPEAKER- Speediff, if you like.
24:48SPEAKER- Speediff?
24:48SPEAKER- Speediff, Speediff, Speediff.
24:50SPEAKER- I don't know, I think Speediff is how people say it.
24:52SPEAKER- I think I've mostly heard Speediff.
24:53SPEAKER- But I think that's the format,
24:55SPEAKERand TOSLINK is that little kind of weird square connector
24:58SPEAKERwith some corners cut off that's mostly used for fiber.
25:02SPEAKER- I've never been clear what the distinction is there,
25:05SPEAKERactually.
25:06SPEAKER- Well, Speediff is a transport standard, I believe.
25:09SPEAKERA type of digital audio interface
25:11SPEAKERused in consumer audio equipment.
25:13SPEAKERThe Speediff, I probably should have known this,
25:16SPEAKERstands for the Sony Phillips Digital Interface.
25:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
25:21SPEAKER- Okay, Speediff is a data link layer protocol,
25:24SPEAKERas well as a set of physical layer specifications.
25:27SPEAKER- So it's both.
25:29SPEAKER- It looks like Speediff can go over multiple connectors.
25:32SPEAKER- Can go over RCA and this fiber,
25:34SPEAKERwhen the RCA is for coax.
25:37SPEAKER- Apparently over USB as well in some cases.
25:40SPEAKER- That seems, I've never ever seen that,
25:42SPEAKERbut probably in high-end audio gear.
25:44SPEAKER- I mean, TOSLINK is the thing
25:45SPEAKERI actually want to talk about here,
25:46SPEAKER'cause that's the unique connector,
25:48SPEAKERand also, yo, it uses light.
25:50SPEAKER- Yeah, it was the first fiber I ever bought.
25:52SPEAKER- Yeah.
25:53SPEAKER- It makes a nice click when you push it in.
25:55SPEAKER- It does, actually.
25:56SPEAKERI came pretty late to TOSLINK,
25:58SPEAKERI didn't have any audio gear that used optical.
26:00SPEAKER- Oh man, as soon as I had,
26:01SPEAKERas soon as those cables cost less than $100,
26:04SPEAKERand I had something that could plug one thing
26:06SPEAKERinto the other thing with it,
26:07SPEAKERI was like, hell yeah, we're TOSLINK in this baby up.
26:10SPEAKER- I could, were you doing multi-channel?
26:12SPEAKERWere you doing like 5.1?
26:13SPEAKER'Cause I've, to this day,
26:14SPEAKERI am just on 2.0 straight up stereo in the living room.
26:18SPEAKER- Well, so when we lived in that loft south of Market,
26:21SPEAKERI had, we had the rear channels set up and hung on the wall,
26:25SPEAKERand it was amazing,
26:26SPEAKER'cause that room was mostly soundproof,
26:29SPEAKERand you could just, we watched movies real loud on this.
26:32SPEAKER- Oh man.
26:33SPEAKER- 55 inch rear projections.
26:34SPEAKERAs somebody who still rides the volume up and down
26:36SPEAKERin this place, I am very jealous, but you're not wrong.
26:40SPEAKERPlugging in TOSLINK for the first time is like eye opening.
26:43SPEAKERIt's like, man, that is a, it's not even a click.
26:46SPEAKERIt's like a funk.
26:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it has a real nice tactile feel.
26:50SPEAKERIt only goes in one way,
26:51SPEAKERbut it's keyed so you can turn it and get it from behind
26:54SPEAKERwithout having to be able to see the port.
26:56SPEAKER- Yep.
26:58SPEAKER- I think this is a solid A or B for me.
27:00SPEAKER- You know, I'm sure you know this,
27:02SPEAKERif you have an active TOSLINK connection
27:04SPEAKERand you look at the end of the cable,
27:05SPEAKERyou can see the red light coming out.
27:07SPEAKER- Yeah, you can blind yourself that way.
27:09SPEAKER- Which is some Terminator kind of shit.
27:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
27:13SPEAKERThe cables were real fragile too.
27:15SPEAKERYou had to be real careful how you bent them.
27:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not sure if I've broken one of those,
27:19SPEAKERbut I bet that's the case.
27:20SPEAKER- I always had the fear.
27:22SPEAKER- I could see them.
27:23SPEAKERWell, they're pretty short, right?
27:24SPEAKER- No, they can be real long.
27:25SPEAKERThat's the beautiful thing about TOSLINK.
27:26SPEAKERI had a real long one one time.
27:28SPEAKERIt was great.
27:31SPEAKERI used them for 5.1 computer speakers for a long time too.
27:36SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, TOSLINK, pretty awesome.
27:39SPEAKERI'm gonna say that's A.
27:42SPEAKER- You think that's A?
27:42SPEAKERI'd give that an A.
27:44SPEAKER- Yeah.
27:45SPEAKER- Put it up here.
27:47SPEAKERLink S-P-D-I-F.
27:49SPEAKEROkay, you wanna do the baby TOSLINK while we're at it?
27:52SPEAKER- Are you sure?
27:53SPEAKERAlthough I've never touched one of those before.
27:55SPEAKER- Oh, I have.
27:56SPEAKERYeah, so sound cards for a long time use these
28:00SPEAKERand it basically would take one of the 3.8, sorry,
28:04SPEAKER3/8 inch, is that right?
28:06SPEAKERThe five point, the little quarter inches.
28:11SPEAKER- Oh, you mean 1/8 inch.
28:13SPEAKER- Yeah, 1/8 inch or.
28:15SPEAKER- 1/8 inch, 3.5 millimeter.
28:16SPEAKER- Thank you, that's what it was.
28:18SPEAKERSorry, I've been sick and I'm still a little stuffy headed.
28:24SPEAKERBut yeah, those, they basically took the back end
28:26SPEAKERout of one of those and you jam this long plastic thing
28:29SPEAKERinto it and it would dock a fiber connector
28:33SPEAKERinto an optical transceiver on the end of the 1/8.
28:38SPEAKER- Oh, so it's like an adapter basically?
28:40SPEAKER- It kind of, it's its own thing, but yeah,
28:44SPEAKERit was just a way to have a TOSLINK that didn't,
28:48SPEAKERthat wasn't as vertically tall basically
28:50SPEAKERfor like low profile connectors.
28:52SPEAKER- Okay, I'll defer to you on that one
28:54SPEAKER'cause I don't think I've ever used one.
28:55SPEAKER- I think it's pretty mid, I'd give it a solid C, I think.
28:58SPEAKER- C, all right, sure.
28:59SPEAKER- It doesn't make the clunk.
29:01SPEAKER- Okay, well yeah, then forget it.
29:04SPEAKER- Yeah, no clunk, get the hell out of here.
29:06SPEAKEROkay, so those we can read up, what else we got?
29:10SPEAKER- Oh boy, it's gonna make me keep picking, huh?
29:13SPEAKER- I mean, you're doing good so far, those were easy.
29:15SPEAKER- Okay, here's a weird one that I can't speak to,
29:19SPEAKERbut I hope you can, the Apple desktop bus.
29:21SPEAKER- Oh God, it's F, F, stream F.
29:25SPEAKER- Wow.
29:26SPEAKER- It's basically a PS2 port.
29:28SPEAKER- Oh, okay, so yeah, I'll refer people again
29:31SPEAKERto, we'll keep linking these in the show notes,
29:33SPEAKERthe cable Bible page on, I guess amiaopensource.github.io
29:41SPEAKERis the one we're looking at,
29:42SPEAKERbut they've got a picture of the ADB here
29:44SPEAKERand yes, it is a mini DIN 4-pin, which-
29:47SPEAKER- It's the same as S-video is what it is.
29:48SPEAKER- Basically looks like S-video or PS2 more or less.
29:51SPEAKER- It's literally the same connector as S-video.
29:54SPEAKERSo it has the pins, I don't think they extended paths
29:57SPEAKERso you could twist it and not fuck up your connector
29:59SPEAKERlike you could with PS2.
30:00SPEAKER- Now I remember this from my time in school media centers
30:03SPEAKERin the late eighties and early nineties,
30:05SPEAKER'cause they have a picture here of the,
30:07SPEAKERon the side of the keyboard.
30:08SPEAKERIs this like an all-purpose cable,
30:12SPEAKERlike plug this, this is the one cable
30:14SPEAKERthat goes into your computer
30:15SPEAKERand then everything connects to this kind of thing?
30:16SPEAKER- Yeah, but also, yeah, so this plugged into the computer
30:19SPEAKERand then I believe you could also plug the mouse
30:21SPEAKERinto the keyboard from this point.
30:22SPEAKER- That's what I mean, that's what I mean.
30:23SPEAKERIt's like here's your one connection to the computer
30:25SPEAKERand then all the peripherals kind of daisy chain
30:28SPEAKERor at least the keyboard and mouse do.
30:30SPEAKER- This was bad enough, as I recall,
30:32SPEAKERthat people were really excited when Apple went to USB,
30:36SPEAKERwhere nobody else in the industry was really looking,
30:39SPEAKERlike feeling great about USB at the time.
30:41SPEAKER- Sure, is this the only Mini DIN 4 pin?
30:45SPEAKER- It's S-video.
30:46SPEAKER- Oh, is S-video literally four?
30:48SPEAKER- Literally, it's literally the exact same connector
30:50SPEAKERas S-video. - You're right, you're right.
30:51SPEAKEROkay, I mean, at that point,
30:52SPEAKERI feel like we're in almost ranking the Mini DIN 4 pin
30:55SPEAKERrather than the ADB.
30:57SPEAKER- I think I'm fine with that.
30:58SPEAKERI mean, S-video, so this is the question again,
31:02SPEAKERlike do we talk about what the conveyance was?
31:04SPEAKER'Cause like S-video was a significant video quality upgrade,
31:08SPEAKERbut the connector sucked.
31:11SPEAKERI think we're talking about connectors here.
31:12SPEAKER- I never minded the S-video connector.
31:14SPEAKERI was pretty pro S-video, although I didn't have S-video
31:17SPEAKERuntil the early 2000s, I wanna say.
31:20SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so I had S-video,
31:24SPEAKERI guess that's when I got S-video too,
31:25SPEAKERis when I moved here and got a new TV.
31:27SPEAKERI don't know, I like, okay, well, so first off,
31:30SPEAKERI think it's important to say ADB
31:32SPEAKERwas electrically unsafe to hotswap.
31:34SPEAKER- Oh, what? - So you had to power it off.
31:37SPEAKER- The whole computer?
31:38SPEAKER- Yeah, just like the PS/2 ports.
31:40SPEAKER- That's crazy. - I think it's,
31:42SPEAKERI think for that reason, 'cause S-video,
31:44SPEAKERyou could unplug, you could hot plug.
31:46SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
31:47SPEAKER- I think this is a F tier.
31:50SPEAKER- F, wow, I mean, I was gonna suggest B,
31:52SPEAKERbut I'll go with you on that.
31:54SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it has all the problems of PS/2.
31:55SPEAKERMaybe we argue that because you can daisy chain it,
31:58SPEAKERit would be D, but also there were a lot of peripherals
32:01SPEAKERthat didn't have the female port,
32:03SPEAKERso you couldn't actually daisy chain it.
32:05SPEAKERAnd I'm sure Apple only put one of these ports
32:07SPEAKERon the main device, so I bet that was absolutely a problem.
32:11SPEAKER- Let's try a D for this, I think.
32:12SPEAKER- You think a D?
32:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I have to, this is, okay,
32:15SPEAKERthis is kind of out of scope for this exercise,
32:17SPEAKERbut I have a fascination with that era of computing
32:20SPEAKERand the multi-port and all-in-one connections
32:23SPEAKERthat a lot of vendors came up with back then,
32:24SPEAKERlike Apple is one thing,
32:26SPEAKERbut if you look at like stuff like the SGIs of the time,
32:28SPEAKERlike they were, and Next, I think Next was big on this,
32:31SPEAKERfor example, like they were big on like,
32:33SPEAKERhey, there's one cable that connects everything.
32:36SPEAKER- I know you like that.
32:37SPEAKER- Like here's the one cable
32:38SPEAKERthat goes from this computer to everything.
32:40SPEAKERLike we have run power and video and input
32:44SPEAKERand everything over this one giant industrial looking cable
32:47SPEAKERthat we have made proprietarily for our $10,000 workstation.
32:51SPEAKERLike that stuff's really fascinating to look back on.
32:53SPEAKER- So picture a world where you have that one cable
32:56SPEAKERthat goes to all of your input devices
32:58SPEAKERand all of your like low bandwidth devices,
33:00SPEAKERand it's a great big long daisy chain,
33:02SPEAKERand also the cable on the mouse is really short,
33:06SPEAKERand if you accidentally disconnect,
33:07SPEAKERit can blow a fuse on your motherboard
33:08SPEAKERthat requires soldering to replace.
33:10SPEAKER- I mean, to be clear,
33:11SPEAKERI've never used one of these connections,
33:12SPEAKERand probably I'm glad I didn't.
33:14SPEAKER- Yeah.
33:15SPEAKER- I just think they're cool in concept.
33:17SPEAKER- I, yeah, I'm, I'll take D, but I might move that down.
33:21SPEAKERI might, but we don't have a conversation about that.
33:23SPEAKER- That's fine, yeah, I'm definitely not advocating for it
33:26SPEAKERin any serious respect.
33:28SPEAKER- Apple desktop bus is red.
33:30SPEAKERIt's been slotted into the D tier.
33:33SPEAKER- Yep, all right, I'm nominating you to pick the next one.
33:36SPEAKER- Okay, let's do, I didn't read up the 30 pin there.
33:41SPEAKERWhat about, what about SCART?
33:45SPEAKER- SCART, man, I was kind of saving SCART for later
33:47SPEAKER'cause it's such a heavy hitter, but sure.
33:49SPEAKER- We can save SCART. - Can we talk about SCART?
33:51SPEAKER- I think SCART's pretty good.
33:52SPEAKER- Here's the thing about me and SCART,
33:55SPEAKERI'm not sure I've ever touched a SCART cable.
33:58SPEAKER- I also have never touched a SCART cable.
34:00SPEAKER- Wow, that's kind of shocking to me.
34:03SPEAKERI guess for obvious reasons,
34:04SPEAKERSCART is not big in the United States.
34:06SPEAKERLike in fact, SCART kind of was not a thing at all here.
34:09SPEAKER- No, we, like SCART was a thing that you heard about
34:12SPEAKERas like, oh, look at how good the euros have it.
34:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
34:16SPEAKER- It's also known as ParaTel or ParaTel Visual.
34:19SPEAKER- Oh.
34:19SPEAKER- In France.
34:20SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that.
34:21SPEAKER- Yeah, 21 pin, so it's a 21 pin connector.
34:25SPEAKERIt's got a top and a bottom and only goes in one way.
34:27SPEAKER- Okay, here's the thing I would say about SCART.
34:29SPEAKERAnd I guess, I don't know if every SCART cable
34:31SPEAKERis a ribbon cable, but the one on the cable Bible is?
34:35SPEAKER- The one on Wikipedia is too.
34:37SPEAKER- This is the most spaceship from alien looking cable
34:41SPEAKERon this entire list.
34:42SPEAKERLike this is the most Nostromo,
34:44SPEAKERlike every monitor on the Nostromo
34:45SPEAKERis connected by SCART.
34:47SPEAKERThis is the rudest looking 70s video technology imaginable.
34:52SPEAKERAnd for that reason alone, I want to put it pretty high,
34:54SPEAKERbut like people that use SCART seem to love it
34:57SPEAKERby and large, like for multiple reasons.
35:00SPEAKERLike I know people like SCART back in the day
35:02SPEAKERfor it's like RGB capabilities, you know,
35:04SPEAKERjust for high quality video.
35:05SPEAKERBut then also you see people talking about
35:07SPEAKERhow satisfying it is to plug it in
35:08SPEAKERand what a thunk it makes.
35:09SPEAKERAnd you know, we're pretty pro thunk here.
35:11SPEAKER- We like a thunk, we like a thunk.
35:13SPEAKERAnd I also like,
35:15SPEAKERlike do you remember having the conversations with people?
35:17SPEAKERYou might not, 'cause you were a little bit young for this,
35:18SPEAKERbut like when it went from twisting on the BNC coax,
35:23SPEAKERwhich was one cable that brought in the signal
35:25SPEAKERfrom the antenna or the cable box or whatever,
35:27SPEAKERto like having to do RCA cables,
35:30SPEAKERthat was very difficult for the older generation.
35:32SPEAKERAnd there were a lot of conversations
35:33SPEAKERabout which color went to which color.
35:36SPEAKERAnd like to you and I,
35:37SPEAKERI know that seems pretty straightforward.
35:39SPEAKERLike you plug the yellow one into the yellow one
35:41SPEAKERand the red one into the red one
35:41SPEAKERand the white one into the white one.
35:43SPEAKER- How else would that work?
35:44SPEAKER- But look, man, I don't know.
35:45SPEAKERIt came up every time, I would always get calls
35:47SPEAKERfrom my parents who were like,
35:48SPEAKER"Hey, the TV's all purple."
35:51SPEAKERAnd it was because they plugged the green into the red
35:53SPEAKERand the red into the...
35:54SPEAKERLook, mistakes were made.
35:56SPEAKERLike making the component cape colors not friendly
35:59SPEAKERto 15% of the male population of the world,
36:02SPEAKERprobably not a great idea, 'cause red and green.
36:04SPEAKER- Yeah, for colorblindness reasons, that makes more sense.
36:07SPEAKER- Yeah.
36:09SPEAKERBut the fact that they packed audio, composite video,
36:14SPEAKERcomponent video, I don't know if they had like a S-video,
36:18SPEAKERlike a luminance and chroma separation in here,
36:21SPEAKERbut it also was bi-directional.
36:23SPEAKERSo like when you plugged into VCR or something,
36:25SPEAKERyou could change the channel on the TV
36:27SPEAKERto the right channel when you turn the TV on.
36:29SPEAKERYeah, dude.
36:30SPEAKER- Wait, it was like a proto HDMI CEC?
36:33SPEAKER- Yep.
36:34SPEAKER- Interesting.
36:35SPEAKER- Yep.
36:36SPEAKER- It can carry S-video.
36:37SPEAKERI'm looking at it on the cable Bible.
36:39SPEAKERThey've got...
36:40SPEAKERIn fact, this is something that fascinates me
36:42SPEAKERabout connectors versus standards,
36:44SPEAKERwhich we keep harping on is a connector like this
36:47SPEAKERthat shows up in so many different categories
36:49SPEAKERbecause it can be so many different things.
36:51SPEAKER- I don't think it had digital ever, right?
36:53SPEAKER- I don't think so.
36:54SPEAKER- I think HDMI was supplanted this entirely
36:57SPEAKERin the digital world.
36:58SPEAKER- I don't think so.
36:59SPEAKERI will say this is pretty personal and arbitrary
37:02SPEAKERand anecdotal, but when I grew up in rural North Carolina
37:07SPEAKERand had access to whatever I had access to there,
37:10SPEAKERlike video game wise,
37:11SPEAKERbut when I got on the internet finally
37:12SPEAKERand started hanging out on IRC
37:14SPEAKERand talking to a fair number of Europeans and Australians
37:17SPEAKERabout video games, SCART, as a term, as a concept,
37:23SPEAKERtook on this like mythological quality.
37:26SPEAKER- Imagine one cable that was just the good one.
37:28SPEAKER- Like the way that some people talked about SCART
37:30SPEAKERjust gave it this mystique that made me so fascinated by it.
37:33SPEAKERI was just like, man, how good can this cable?
37:35SPEAKERLike how good can this quality, this signal be?
37:38SPEAKERThe people are like, you know,
37:39SPEAKERpeople talk about modding SCART into things and stuff.
37:41SPEAKERAnd I was just like, man, this must be the ultimate video.
37:45SPEAKERI've talked about it before, but I hope to one day,
37:48SPEAKERI hope to mod a SCART connection into that trinitron
37:51SPEAKERin my parents' basement.
37:52SPEAKERAnd then I will have my own SCART.
37:54SPEAKER- I hope that you get that SCART at some point, Brad.
37:57SPEAKER- Thank you.
37:58SPEAKERIt's a life goal.
38:00SPEAKER- And the one thing I will say
38:02SPEAKERis that SCART did not support hot plugging.
38:05SPEAKER- Really?
38:06SPEAKER- 'Cause it was carrying a fairly high voltage,
38:09SPEAKERis what Wikipedia says.
38:10SPEAKERSo no risk of personal injury,
38:12SPEAKERbut you could damage the electronics within devices
38:14SPEAKERif the connector was inserted improperly.
38:16SPEAKER- That's not great.
38:18SPEAKERI mean, look, that was kind of everything at a point.
38:20SPEAKER- I think it was so much better than everything else
38:22SPEAKERthat was on the market at the time
38:24SPEAKERthat I think this still is a pretty clear S rank for me.
38:26SPEAKER- Oh, wow, okay.
38:28SPEAKERI guess I'm fine with that.
38:29SPEAKERMy only reservation is that it feels a little bit
38:32SPEAKERirresponsible to award an S to something
38:34SPEAKERthat neither of us has ever used.
38:36SPEAKER- I think that's a real testament.
38:38SPEAKERLook, I'm fine bumping lightning off of the S tier
38:40SPEAKERif you're worried about it,
38:41SPEAKERand then we can just put SCART in that slot.
38:42SPEAKERIt's fine.
38:43SPEAKER- I think there's plenty of room in the S tier for now.
38:45SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
38:46SPEAKERSo we can revisit when we run out of space in the S tier,
38:49SPEAKERbut I think we start there.
38:51SPEAKER- Looking at the S tier though,
38:52SPEAKERlike there is a very heavy analog
38:55SPEAKERand industrial kind of bias to the S tier so far.
38:58SPEAKER- Look, maybe that's the lesson, right?
39:01SPEAKER- XLR, BNC, and SCART are all in the S tier as of now.
39:05SPEAKER- I mean, those are all good connectors from where I'm sitting.
39:08SPEAKER- You know, I can't deny.
39:10SPEAKER- What about the classic tip ring sleeve, the quarter inch?
39:14SPEAKER- Quarter inch.
39:15SPEAKER- The big boy.
39:16SPEAKER- Man, talk about a good thunk.
39:17SPEAKER- It's a good thunk.
39:18SPEAKER- Quarter inch for people who don't know audio,
39:20SPEAKERI mean, I'm trying to think it's like
39:21SPEAKERwhat you would plug into a guitar and an amp.
39:23SPEAKER- Yeah, well that would be a mono one probably.
39:26SPEAKER- Or your receiver.
39:26SPEAKERWell, just in terms of the way,
39:28SPEAKERthe general shape and size of the connector,
39:30SPEAKERlike your AV receiver almost certainly the headphone port
39:34SPEAKERor jack on an AV receiver is a quarter inch,
39:37SPEAKERnot an eighth inch is what plugged into your iPod
39:40SPEAKERor your Walkman.
39:41SPEAKER- Or your phone for back in the days when that was a thing.
39:43SPEAKER- Yeah, and quarter inch is the big fat version of that.
39:46SPEAKER- Yeah, the neat thing about quarter inch
39:47SPEAKERis it comes in different number of channels.
39:50SPEAKERSo you can get tip ring sleeve, which is tip ring sleeve,
39:54SPEAKERthat's one channel.
39:56SPEAKER- Three channels, right?
39:57SPEAKER- No, because the ring is the separating bit.
40:00SPEAKER- But wait, is TRS stereo?
40:01SPEAKERIs TRS just plain stereo and nothing else?
40:04SPEAKEROh, 'cause you need a ground, right?
40:05SPEAKER- TRS is stereo, you need three wires to do stereo.
40:08SPEAKER- 'Cause one of those is a ground.
40:09SPEAKER- Yeah, so TRS is stereo, TS is mono.
40:13SPEAKER- Right, yes.
40:14SPEAKER- But I think they even do tip ring sleeve
40:17SPEAKERwhere you can have like-
40:18SPEAKER- Oh, they do three Rs.
40:20SPEAKERThere's TRRR and wait, hang on, how many Rs was that?
40:23SPEAKERThere's T3RS basically for like Astro uses that stuff.
40:27SPEAKERI think like some like headsets that use extra,
40:32SPEAKERwell, but also like extra like inline controls,
40:34SPEAKERlike mute controls, stuff like that.
40:36SPEAKERLike they'll use an extra ring for control signals.
40:39SPEAKER- I think that's on the 8th inch though,
40:42SPEAKERthe 3.5 millimeter ones.
40:44SPEAKERAnd also the TRRR, the three Rs is an Astro proprietary thing
40:48SPEAKERis what the internets is telling me.
40:50SPEAKER- Are you sure?
40:51SPEAKERMaybe you're right, maybe that is the case.
40:53SPEAKER- The TRRRS, it seems like there's a lot of confusion.
40:59SPEAKERThe main thing to know is that the number of metal rings
41:04SPEAKERis the number of channels you have minus,
41:07SPEAKERnumber of metal rings minus one
41:08SPEAKERis the number of channels the cable can carry.
41:10SPEAKER- Yes, yes, I am looking on pro video coalition.
41:14SPEAKER- Oh, that's where I am too.
41:15SPEAKER- In a section called
41:17SPEAKERCombating the Misconnection Epidemic.
41:19SPEAKER- Yep.
41:20SPEAKER- They say the TRRR,
41:21SPEAKERGod, I can't, it's really hard to count those Rs out.
41:24SPEAKERT-R-R-R-S, yes.
41:27SPEAKERApparently Sony also used in some devices.
41:30SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.
41:31SPEAKER- Over time, so it is a standard action.
41:34SPEAKERA lot of Android phones in the early 2010s
41:36SPEAKERused for more channels.
41:38SPEAKER- Right, okay.
41:39SPEAKER- I recall and none of them were compatible with each other.
41:42SPEAKERIt was really annoying.
41:42SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause a while back I tried to find
41:45SPEAKERa quarter inch to basically Astro,
41:48SPEAKERlike a quarter inch to TRRRS.
41:50SPEAKER- You can get that from Astro.
41:51SPEAKER- Could not find it.
41:52SPEAKERLike could not find a cable
41:53SPEAKERthat will just plug straight from my receiver into my A40s.
41:57SPEAKER- Yep.
41:58SPEAKER- But there were a lot of like Android phone adapters
42:01SPEAKERthat you would see for that kind of thing.
42:02SPEAKER- Well, but, okay, so this is off the point though.
42:04SPEAKERThe point is good thunk, solid connectors.
42:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm gonna say the number of rings
42:09SPEAKERis not really material here.
42:10SPEAKERWe're talking more just the general plug.
42:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I think this is a solid A for me.
42:15SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, okay, sure.
42:16SPEAKERQuarter inch feels like a good A.
42:17SPEAKERI mean, I'm using a quarter inch
42:20SPEAKERinto this audio interface right now.
42:22SPEAKER- How do we feel about the quarter inch mini?
42:24SPEAKERThe one eighth?
42:26SPEAKER- Oh, I was gonna say, isn't that just an eighth inch?
42:28SPEAKER- Yeah, it is.
42:31SPEAKER- Is it better or worse than the quarter inch?
42:33SPEAKER- I would venture a guess that the eighth inch connector
42:38SPEAKERis probably the most handled connector on earth.
42:42SPEAKER- Audio connector?
42:43SPEAKERProbably USB at this point.
42:45SPEAKER- Ah, maybe so.
42:46SPEAKERYeah, maybe it's maybe so.
42:48SPEAKERI mean, if you factor in like the entire span of time
42:51SPEAKERsince the first cable was conceived,
42:53SPEAKERwhat was the first cable?
42:55SPEAKERWhat was the first cable I ever made?
42:55SPEAKER- It's probably power, right?
42:57SPEAKER- Well, like, okay, I guess I'm kind of setting power
43:01SPEAKERto the side there.
43:02SPEAKERLike I mean, more or less something
43:04SPEAKERthat carried some kind of signal.
43:05SPEAKER- So the first one that you could then probably telegraph,
43:09SPEAKERwhich were just wires, they were cables.
43:12SPEAKER- Does that count though if you're just plugging a wire in?
43:14SPEAKERI'm not sure if that's, that's not a connector.
43:15SPEAKER- I feel like then if, okay,
43:17SPEAKERso if you wanna talk about connectors,
43:18SPEAKERthe things that telephone operators used
43:20SPEAKERprior to electronic switching.
43:22SPEAKER- Like a switchboard plugs?
43:23SPEAKER- Switchboard, that was quarter inch monos.
43:26SPEAKER- Oh, was it really?
43:27SPEAKER- I believe so.
43:28SPEAKER- Okay, anyway, back to the point.
43:30SPEAKERYeah, maybe USB is more handled
43:32SPEAKERthan eighth inch at this point,
43:34SPEAKERbut there were a lot of eighth inch plugs
43:35SPEAKERused for several decades and still would be
43:38SPEAKERif some people had their way.
43:40SPEAKER- I mean, I'll go and tell you,
43:42SPEAKERI often wish that we still had,
43:46SPEAKERwe still had the eighth inch on the phones.
43:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I think a lot of people are with you on that.
43:52SPEAKER- I guess I like that it's not a,
43:56SPEAKERthat the phone is a tiny bit thinner,
43:57SPEAKERbut the flexibility of not having that blows.
44:01SPEAKERSo I also feel like this was
44:02SPEAKERa pretty fragile connector though.
44:04SPEAKER- A little bit.
44:05SPEAKERI don't think I ever broke one that I can remember.
44:07SPEAKER- Oh, I definitely broke 'em.
44:09SPEAKERI definitely, well, I had, I broke adapters a lot
44:13SPEAKER'cause I was using, I was using a pair of headphones
44:16SPEAKERthat had a quarter inch headphone jack at that point
44:19SPEAKERand the adapters were, like they just,
44:22SPEAKERthey didn't hold up over time compared to the quarter inch.
44:25SPEAKER- I could see that.
44:26SPEAKERSpeaking of both adapters and phones,
44:27SPEAKERdo you have like a lightning to eighth inch
44:31SPEAKERor a USB-C to eighth inch adapter
44:33SPEAKERthat you have used with a phone?
44:34SPEAKER'Cause I do.
44:35SPEAKER- I have a thing with, I have a drawer directly to my right
44:38SPEAKERthat has a phone box that probably still has the one
44:40SPEAKERthat came with like, I don't know,
44:42SPEAKERan iPhone 6 or something in it.
44:44SPEAKER- No, that one still had a headphone jack.
44:47SPEAKERIt was like the, was it the eight?
44:49SPEAKERDid the eight lose the jack?
44:50SPEAKER- The problem is now I have a USB-C iPhone,
44:53SPEAKERso my lightning adapter doesn't work anymore.
44:55SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I'm sure, right?
44:56SPEAKERI have to assume USB-C to headphone adapters
44:58SPEAKERare like five bucks now.
45:00SPEAKER- I'm sure, yeah.
45:02SPEAKER- Not that, I mean, having to carry an adapter
45:03SPEAKERand then not being able to charge
45:05SPEAKERwhile you're using your headphones is a pain.
45:06SPEAKERI will grant.
45:07SPEAKERBut anyway, none of this has anything to do
45:08SPEAKERwith the eighth inch, which maybe like a B for me.
45:14SPEAKER- This feels like one lower than the quarter inch.
45:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's right.
45:18SPEAKER- This is the 3.5 millimeter/1/8 inch.
45:21SPEAKER- Yeah. - Okay, what else we got?
45:23SPEAKERWhat's next?
45:26SPEAKER- How about, oh boy, my eyes have landed
45:29SPEAKERon the storage block.
45:31SPEAKER- Oh, this is exciting.
45:33SPEAKER- We should probably tackle one of these.
45:36SPEAKERFor example, PATA or IDE, as it actually should be known.
45:41SPEAKER- Uh-huh.
45:42SPEAKER- SCSI, although SCSI of the era,
45:44SPEAKERI think is multiple connectors, SATA, ESATA,
45:47SPEAKERthere's like this whole block of storage here.
45:52SPEAKER- SCSI got real weird after the time
45:55SPEAKERwhen consumers would have been using SCSI.
45:58SPEAKER- Did it?
45:59SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a lot, like it got weird for a while
46:02SPEAKERand then it got to started using SATA cables,
46:04SPEAKERspecial versions of SATA connectors, basically.
46:07SPEAKER- Yes, 'cause now we just talked about this
46:09SPEAKERon the shucking episode a few weeks ago.
46:13SPEAKERLike there's SCSI over USB now.
46:14SPEAKER- Yep, anything could be SCSI.
46:16SPEAKER- I'm trying to think, I think I saw something else
46:18SPEAKERthat SCSI ran over not long ago
46:21SPEAKERthat I can't think of anyway.
46:23SPEAKERYeah, even on the cable Bible,
46:24SPEAKERthere are six different connections for SCSI here.
46:27SPEAKERIt's the 50 pin that I remember.
46:28SPEAKER- That's, I think that's, I think that's like,
46:30SPEAKERit's a 50 pin ribbon, you could daisy chain up to,
46:32SPEAKERI think seven devices on or something.
46:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds right.
46:36SPEAKER- It needed to be terminated, which is a minus.
46:38SPEAKER- Yes, I guess we're just talking about SCSI now.
46:40SPEAKER'Cause the SCSI 50 pin and the IDE, which was 40, right?
46:44SPEAKERWasn't IDE 40?
46:45SPEAKER- Well, 40, but then eventually 80 wires
46:49SPEAKER'cause they did some signaling tricks to make it faster.
46:51SPEAKER- Right, those are quite similar.
46:53SPEAKERThey're not identical,
46:54SPEAKERbut they're both big fat storage ribbon cables.
46:57SPEAKER- They're keyed ribbon cables.
46:59SPEAKERThey have a one bit, they only go in one way.
47:03SPEAKERThey're big wide ribbon cables
47:04SPEAKERthat are a huge pain in the ass to work with.
47:06SPEAKER- This is embarrassing.
47:07SPEAKERI guess we're just talking about both of these now.
47:08SPEAKERLet's just talk about both 'cause they're similar enough.
47:10SPEAKER- I think these are both gonna fall
47:11SPEAKERin the same spot probably.
47:12SPEAKER- This is embarrassing.
47:13SPEAKERYou could not daisy chain IDE, right?
47:15SPEAKERLike it was one cable, one drive.
47:17SPEAKER- No, two drives.
47:18SPEAKERSo you had a- - Was it?
47:19SPEAKER- Yeah, they used, look, okay, apologies.
47:22SPEAKERThey used master enslaved terminology for padded drives
47:24SPEAKERand you had to move a jumper on the back of the drive.
47:27SPEAKERI think now I would call them secondary and primary, yeah.
47:30SPEAKER- That's probably the way to go now.
47:31SPEAKER- It didn't matter which one was which.
47:32SPEAKERThe performance was the same.
47:33SPEAKER- But what I mean though is that that was back when
47:36SPEAKERit was pretty spendy to own more than one hard drive,
47:38SPEAKERfor example.
47:39SPEAKERYou probably had one hard drive and one CD-ROM
47:41SPEAKERin an average consumer computer back then.
47:43SPEAKER- Yeah, most computers would have two IDE ports.
47:46SPEAKERSo if you cared about, the benefit of having two
47:52SPEAKERwas that you could put each one on its own chain
47:54SPEAKERand then you'd get, you wouldn't have to share
47:56SPEAKERthe bandwidth across the two drives.
47:59SPEAKERBut if you were plugging in a hard drive
48:01SPEAKERand a optical drive, it probably didn't matter.
48:04SPEAKER- Right, you could just put the CD-ROM
48:05SPEAKERon the second connector on the one cable.
48:08SPEAKERThe CD-ROMs were slow anyway.
48:10SPEAKER- Yep, and hard drives were slow.
48:11SPEAKERIt was, everything was slow back then.
48:13SPEAKER- It's true.
48:14SPEAKERYou didn't have to worry about jumpers with IDE,
48:16SPEAKERalthough that's not, I don't know if that's germane
48:18SPEAKERhere to the connector.
48:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think jumpers are important.
48:22SPEAKERSATA, you had to, SCSI, you had to worry
48:24SPEAKERabout jumpers as well.
48:25SPEAKER- Yeah, how did you terminate something on a SCSI chain?
48:29SPEAKERI can't remember, was that just a jumper switch?
48:32SPEAKER- No, I think you had a thing that you plugged in at the end.
48:34SPEAKER- Something you plugged in, I cannot remember
48:36SPEAKERhow that worked.
48:37SPEAKER- It's been a really long time since I thought
48:38SPEAKERabout SCSI in that context.
48:40SPEAKERI had SCSI drives in the 90s,
48:42SPEAKERand then when the parallel ETA stuff got fast enough,
48:47SPEAKERit stopped being worth fooling with.
48:49SPEAKER- Yes, that's correct.
48:50SPEAKERThat's exactly my case as well.
48:53SPEAKER- And then SATA hit, and then you never thought
48:55SPEAKERabout SCSI again if you weren't running
48:57SPEAKERa whole buttload of drives.
48:58SPEAKER- Yeah.
48:59SPEAKER- But I mean, if we're talking about connectors,
49:02SPEAKERthese are both ribbon cables.
49:04SPEAKERBoth kind of a pain.
49:05SPEAKERIf you plugged them in wrong, you could jack up
49:07SPEAKERthe motherboard or the drive,
49:09SPEAKERand then have to work on the pins
49:10SPEAKERwith a mechanical pencil, which was never good.
49:13SPEAKERI think these are both C, D tiers for me.
49:16SPEAKER- Yeah, C, I'd say C.
49:21SPEAKERThere's a bit of nostalgia to these, to be fair, for me.
49:24SPEAKER- Like for me, yeah, but I'm taking nostalgia out of it.
49:27SPEAKERFor me, I think the gap between C and D is,
49:30SPEAKERdoes maybe D and F have the potential
49:32SPEAKERfor hardware destruction?
49:34SPEAKERAnd C does not.
49:35SPEAKER- Fair, yes.
49:36SPEAKERI don't know that I could really distinguish between,
49:39SPEAKERin terms of quality, like this is SCSI and IDE.
49:42SPEAKERSCSI cables were a lot stiffer in my memory.
49:44SPEAKERWell, IDE.
49:44SPEAKER- I think that was a cable by cable.
49:46SPEAKER- Any ribbon cable was pretty stiff, to be fair.
49:50SPEAKER- Nobody made those cool, rounded SCSI cables, though.
49:53SPEAKER- That's true, but by the time people were doing that,
49:55SPEAKERI think SCSI was just not really worth it at that point.
49:58SPEAKERLike that was, rounded IDE cables
50:00SPEAKERwas toward the end of IDE in general.
50:03SPEAKER- Yeah, that didn't start until I was at maximum PC,
50:05SPEAKERprobably, and it was always a little iffy.
50:08SPEAKER- Did you use those?
50:08SPEAKERI sure did.
50:09SPEAKER- Yeah, we did.
50:10SPEAKERIt was, we did a bunch of testing on them
50:12SPEAKERto see if we could make them be slower than regular cables,
50:15SPEAKERand for the most part, they were fine.
50:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I never had an issue.
50:19SPEAKERWhat was the, just for people who don't remember,
50:20SPEAKERwhat was the deal with the ribbon cables?
50:22SPEAKERLike every other wire is a ground or something like that?
50:27SPEAKERLike it was supposed to be a signal integrity thing?
50:29SPEAKER- On the AD wire 40 pin cables, they were,
50:35SPEAKERyeah, like it was like a balanced cable, basically.
50:38SPEAKERSo signals would go one way,
50:41SPEAKERlike each, a signal would go in opposite directions
50:44SPEAKERfor each signal sent,
50:45SPEAKERso it reduced noise on the lines or something.
50:47SPEAKER- So the point is changing from the ribbon layout
50:50SPEAKERto just a fat bundle of cables and a little sheath
50:52SPEAKERwas supposed to be not great for signal integrity, but.
50:55SPEAKER- Yeah, but I think the hack was that you paired
50:57SPEAKERthe pins with each other and it was fine.
51:00SPEAKERThe cables with each other was fine.
51:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I never had an issue.
51:02SPEAKERI still have those cables in the closet.
51:06SPEAKER- Mm, rounded, eh?
51:09SPEAKERShould we look at?
51:11SPEAKER- Did we place those?
51:11SPEAKERWhat are we saying?
51:12SPEAKER- I put them in D 'cause they can kill your,
51:13SPEAKERyou can break hardware.
51:15SPEAKER- Wait, can you break hardware with them?
51:17SPEAKER- You could, you could, you could, sure.
51:19SPEAKERYou could bend pins, you could cause all sorts of problems.
51:21SPEAKER- I don't know, but they are key.
51:23SPEAKERThey only go in one way.
51:24SPEAKER- That's true.
51:25SPEAKER- I, those feel like a C to me.
51:27SPEAKER- You think those are C?
51:28SPEAKERI mean, I'll move them up.
51:30SPEAKER- Let's try it at a C, just see what happens.
51:32SPEAKER- Yeah, we don't have a lot in C right now.
51:34SPEAKERI think, I think they're way worse than TOSLINK though.
51:36SPEAKER- Yeah, and I, before we move on,
51:37SPEAKERI think like we're probably not gonna get into
51:40SPEAKERsome of these very esoteric SCSI variants.
51:43SPEAKER- No, I don't, eh, mainly 'cause I don't think
51:45SPEAKEReither of us have any hands-on experience with them.
51:47SPEAKERNot that that sort of stopped us with SCART.
51:49SPEAKER- Definitely not.
51:50SPEAKERThe, I will say though, people, again,
51:51SPEAKERshould pull up this Cable Bible site.
51:53SPEAKERThe, the SCSI HDI 30 cable though is right up there
51:57SPEAKERwith SCART on the industrial looking.
52:00SPEAKER- Yeah. - The Stromo scale.
52:02SPEAKER- That, that is very clearly something that you jam
52:04SPEAKERinto a giant SAN, like disk array drive enclosure
52:09SPEAKERin a data center someplace.
52:11SPEAKER- It's just a big fat rectangular connector
52:12SPEAKERwith 30 very visible pins on it.
52:14SPEAKERLike it's just a big fat six by five grid of pins in this.
52:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
52:18SPEAKER- It looks really cool.
52:19SPEAKER- Does it have a, like a, like a physical connector,
52:22SPEAKERlike a clunking locking mechanism?
52:23SPEAKER- It looks like it's got some kind of latch, yeah.
52:27SPEAKER- I love it.
52:28SPEAKER- Anyway.
52:29SPEAKER- Okay, let's talk about some stuff with blocking mechanisms.
52:31SPEAKERWhat, what do you think about DisplayPort, Brad?
52:33SPEAKER- Oh man, that's a big question.
52:36SPEAKERI think DisplayPort's pretty good.
52:38SPEAKER- I, I generally like DisplayPort.
52:40SPEAKER- I think like, I mean, electrically or, you know,
52:42SPEAKERin terms of signal, like it hasn't DisplayPort
52:45SPEAKERkind of leapfrogged HDMI every generation.
52:47SPEAKERLike typically, typically the new DisplayPort shows up
52:50SPEAKERat some point after the new HDMI
52:52SPEAKERand has better capabilities.
52:53SPEAKERLike that's, 'cause for a long time,
52:55SPEAKERyou have to get DisplayPort to do certain,
52:58SPEAKERto drive certain high resolution, high refresh combos
53:00SPEAKERon your monitors, remember?
53:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I think HDMI 2.1 pretty much caught HDMI up,
53:07SPEAKERbut for a long time you're right, yeah.
53:09SPEAKER- Now it's not a big deal, yeah, but for a long time,
53:11SPEAKERDVI was later, I'm sorry, DisplayPort was the thing
53:14SPEAKERyou needed for high refresh computer monitor gaming.
53:18SPEAKER- Yeah, and I think, I mean, I think really,
53:20SPEAKERit's still DisplayPort is what you want if you're on a PC.
53:23SPEAKERIt's segmented back into the place that you want
53:26SPEAKERwhere HDMI is for TVs pretty much
53:28SPEAKERand DisplayPort is for monitors.
53:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
53:32SPEAKER- I think I like, generally speaking,
53:35SPEAKERI like the kind of locking connector
53:37SPEAKERthat most DisplayPort cables have.
53:40SPEAKER- I'm on the fence on that one
53:42SPEAKER'cause I have had it break before.
53:43SPEAKER- I have also had it break, that's true.
53:45SPEAKER- I've had the release mechanism in the cable break
53:48SPEAKERon like a decent, like a cable matters, like $10 cable,
53:52SPEAKERwhich maybe that's not the best cable on the planet.
53:54SPEAKER- Pretty cheap cable.
53:56SPEAKER- I had the whole, the whole like plastic thing
53:58SPEAKERsnap off one time, like the, so it was just a raw connector.
54:02SPEAKER- That one, that one looks really cool,
54:04SPEAKERbut I don't use it anymore.
54:05SPEAKERThe teeth are a little scary,
54:07SPEAKERlike the thing that locks into the port.
54:09SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:10SPEAKER- They look like fangs.
54:11SPEAKER- I'm gonna say it's hard to plug in.
54:13SPEAKERIf you have a monitor that the ports are oriented vertically,
54:17SPEAKERit's hard to plug in.
54:20SPEAKER- I guess I could see that.
54:22SPEAKER- Like I often rotate my monitors on the stand
54:25SPEAKERso that I can plug them in and then rotate them back down
54:27SPEAKERto put the cables in.
54:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it is keyed in a pretty significant way.
54:33SPEAKER- It's not, you can't feel it with a fingertip though,
54:35SPEAKERat least I can't.
54:35SPEAKER- You're right, actually,
54:36SPEAKERit does feel just kind of rectangular
54:38SPEAKERif you're fumbling around.
54:39SPEAKER- Yeah, you should have put a dot on one side
54:41SPEAKERor something that you could feel with your hand.
54:43SPEAKER- Yeah, I also have to plug in a display port cable
54:46SPEAKERwithout seeing it fairly regularly,
54:48SPEAKERand that sucks now that you mention it.
54:49SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
54:51SPEAKER- Oh God, don't even get me started
54:52SPEAKERon the issues with certain, it's been long enough,
54:55SPEAKERI can't quite explain this in any detail now,
54:58SPEAKERbut there are electrical issues
54:59SPEAKERwith certain pins on display ports,
55:01SPEAKERI think it's like poor implementation stuff.
55:03SPEAKER- Oh, for older versions of display port probably?
55:06SPEAKER- It was like, it was a hot plug thing,
55:08SPEAKERlike there's a certain, I am way out of my depth
55:10SPEAKER'cause I've forgotten most of how this works,
55:11SPEAKERsomebody on the Discord will chime in,
55:13SPEAKERI know I've talked to, this was like three years ago,
55:15SPEAKERI talked to people on there about,
55:17SPEAKERit was like feeding power back over a certain pin
55:19SPEAKERand display port could be bad for certain devices,
55:21SPEAKERI can't remember how that worked exactly.
55:23SPEAKER- But that's like a weird implementation thing,
55:24SPEAKERI'm not too worried about that.
55:26SPEAKER- But I have had to continuity test a specific pin
55:28SPEAKERon a display port cable before
55:30SPEAKERto make sure it was not wired incorrectly or whatever
55:32SPEAKERand that sucked.
55:33SPEAKER- I feel like display port is a,
55:36SPEAKERit carries audio, it carries video, it's two way.
55:39SPEAKER- I forgot it would carry audio
55:40SPEAKER'cause typically you're plugging it into a monitor
55:43SPEAKERand who's using the speakers on monitors usually?
55:45SPEAKER- I mean, actually when you put it that way,
55:47SPEAKERit's probably a negative
55:48SPEAKER'cause if my monitor couldn't connect to the PC
55:50SPEAKERthen I wouldn't constantly change to the monitor
55:53SPEAKERas my output device every time I do a video card update.
55:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I just go disable the audio device
55:59SPEAKERon the monitor as soon as I can after that.
56:01SPEAKER- I've had it set to don't allow in Windows for years
56:04SPEAKERand a driver update will wake it up every time.
56:08SPEAKERYeah, I don't know, it still feels like a net positive.
56:12SPEAKER- Display port's like a E.
56:14SPEAKER- I think a B, I was gonna say A.
56:17SPEAKERDo you feel like display port is better than HDMI?
56:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it probably is.
56:22SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause it's keyed, it's locks.
56:25SPEAKERI like that it locks.
56:28SPEAKER- Obviously anybody can make whatever they want, I guess,
56:30SPEAKERbut they don't enforce that requirement
56:32SPEAKER'cause I have bought display port cables
56:34SPEAKERwith no locking mechanism.
56:35SPEAKER- That's true, me too.
56:36SPEAKER- And I might actually prefer them, I'm not sure.
56:38SPEAKER- I like having the option though.
56:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess.
56:42SPEAKER- To me, hey, this is a thing
56:43SPEAKERI don't ever wanna have to worry about coming unplugged.
56:45SPEAKERThat's you buy a locking cable.
56:47SPEAKERHey, this is on the back of my desk
56:48SPEAKERwhich is easily accessible.
56:50SPEAKERThat will not buy whichever one's cheaper, I don't care.
56:52SPEAKER- You mentioning monitors on arms though
56:54SPEAKERhas made me think about locking connectors again
56:57SPEAKERin a new way because having a monitor
56:59SPEAKERon a spring-loaded mount and tethered to an arm
57:03SPEAKERwith a cable run through some kind of routing apparatus
57:07SPEAKERand that won't just give way if, for example,
57:09SPEAKERthe monitor pops up on the spring mount.
57:12SPEAKERThere is some potential for breaking ports
57:14SPEAKERon your monitors there with cables that don't just give.
57:17SPEAKER- Oh, well, so the way you do that is
57:19SPEAKERif you put it on the arm right,
57:20SPEAKERthen you shouldn't have a problem
57:21SPEAKERbecause you leave enough slack in the arm
57:23SPEAKERthat you can do the full range of movement.
57:25SPEAKER- Yeah, you say that.
57:26SPEAKER- Well, I mean, you can't fight user error.
57:29SPEAKER- Things happen.
57:30SPEAKERI'm still not 100% sold on locking cables in every context,
57:35SPEAKERbut I think DisplayPort's probably an A.
57:39SPEAKER- Okay, I can get behind that.
57:41SPEAKER- It does a lot of stuff right.
57:43SPEAKER- I'm putting it right next to HDMI.
57:44SPEAKERThey can be buddies.
57:46SPEAKER- After I go refresh my memory
57:47SPEAKERon one of those electrical issues, I might come back and--
57:50SPEAKER- We can talk about it.
57:51SPEAKER- I don't think we're gonna get through this list
57:53SPEAKERbetween now and next week, so.
57:55SPEAKER- Oh, I don't think so.
57:56SPEAKER- Yeah, this might be our off and on project
57:59SPEAKERthroughout the entire year, the way it's going so far.
58:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I would love to hear what people think.
58:03SPEAKERI mean, we're not gonna do like a straight month
58:04SPEAKERof just this necessarily, but yeah,
58:06SPEAKERI wonder what people think about this
58:07SPEAKERjust being kind of a one-on, one-off
58:09SPEAKERor something of that nature.
58:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I'd assume next week is probably CES stuff
58:13SPEAKERif there's anything interesting out of CES,
58:15SPEAKERwhich seems like there will be, but I don't know, we'll see.
58:17SPEAKER- Yeah, should we do one more quick one here?
58:20SPEAKER- Yeah, we can.
58:21SPEAKERYou wanna do RJ45?
58:22SPEAKER- Oh boy, I don't think-- - Actually, that's a banger.
58:24SPEAKERWe should save that. - That's not a quick one.
58:26SPEAKER- What about, maybe this isn't a project
58:29SPEAKERfor the whole year, I'm looking at it.
58:30SPEAKERI think we may have one or two more episodes.
58:32SPEAKERWhat about power cord, what about a power plug?
58:35SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, sure.
58:36SPEAKER- What about the-- - I don't think we've,
58:37SPEAKERwe haven't done any power plugs yet.
58:38SPEAKER- Yeah, no, the official name of the power plug
58:41SPEAKERthat goes into your desktop PC's power supply
58:43SPEAKERis the C13/C14.
58:47SPEAKERThe C14 is the one with the vertical pins
58:49SPEAKERand the C13 is the one with the, that has the face.
58:54SPEAKERIEC cord is what it is. - I don't think I ever,
58:56SPEAKERI never knew what--
58:57SPEAKER- You've never had a 1200 watt power supply
58:59SPEAKERin your computer, Brad? - I guess so.
59:00SPEAKERWell, I just, I never knew what the names
59:01SPEAKERof any of those were.
59:02SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
59:04SPEAKERBut the difference on the 13 and 14
59:08SPEAKERis the total amount of juice that's covered,
59:11SPEAKERcarried across that thing. - There.
59:13SPEAKER- So yeah, I think this is a good one.
59:15SPEAKERThis one's a banger.
59:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I think so, it generally feels good
59:19SPEAKERto plug those things in.
59:20SPEAKERIt's got a nice, they don't click or thunk or anything,
59:22SPEAKERbut they do have a very nice, snug fit.
59:24SPEAKER- It's a, there's a resistance to it that feels nice.
59:27SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:28SPEAKER- It's like, it's probably one of the older cables
59:32SPEAKERon this list, one of the older connectors on this list.
59:34SPEAKER- Oh, surely.
59:35SPEAKER- Been around for a long time.
59:37SPEAKERNever had it fail, never lost a power supply
59:40SPEAKERbecause the cable, the connector was bad.
59:42SPEAKER- Yeah, true.
59:44SPEAKER- I don't know, this feels like an A.
59:46SPEAKERIt's not real magic or anything.
59:48SPEAKER- No, it does what it's-- - Workman-like.
59:50SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, exactly, it does what it's supposed to do.
59:53SPEAKER- Is it an A or a B, I guess, is the question.
59:55SPEAKER- Just to be abundantly clear,
59:55SPEAKERwe were talking about the thing
59:56SPEAKERon your computer's power supply,
59:57SPEAKERor I think you, I guess you said that.
59:59SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the-- - It's the three prong.
1:00:01SPEAKER- It's like a square, it's a rectangle with the corners,
1:00:05SPEAKERtwo of the corners cut off in three prongs.
1:00:08SPEAKER- Also in some video game consoles,
1:00:10SPEAKERthe launch PlayStation 3, for example,
1:00:12SPEAKERin fact, I remember-- - Oh, that was so good.
1:00:14SPEAKER- I remember the launch PS3 showing up
1:00:16SPEAKERand I'm looking at that and going like,
1:00:17SPEAKERman, these video game consoles are getting serious
1:00:20SPEAKERwith this thing, it's like a computer now.
1:00:22SPEAKER- Didn't the Xbox One have that too?
1:00:26SPEAKERIt had a two-pin one, not a three-pin,
1:00:28SPEAKERit didn't have a ground.
1:00:28SPEAKER- No, the One, though, and even the 360,
1:00:32SPEAKERit had a proprietary power plug into it.
1:00:36SPEAKERThey never did the, what is it, C13 is the one?
1:00:39SPEAKER- C13, actually the one with no ground is probably different
1:00:43SPEAKER'cause I feel like Sony did no grounds in one of 'em.
1:00:46SPEAKERThe PS3 was absolutely just the three-prong.
1:00:49SPEAKER- Three-prong. - Like the
1:00:50SPEAKERcomputer power supply version.
1:00:52SPEAKER- Yeah, this feels like a B to me, I think.
1:00:54SPEAKER- You think? - I don't know,
1:00:55SPEAKERI could be convinced. - Yeah, yeah, sure.
1:00:57SPEAKERA B is fine for me for this.
1:00:59SPEAKER- Like, I like it, I feel like it gets the job done.
1:01:03SPEAKERB is, like that gets the job done, right?
1:01:06SPEAKER- I've got nothing against it, I can't come up
1:01:08SPEAKERwith any urgent complaints about it.
1:01:11SPEAKER- So that, we did some work today, Brad.
1:01:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, there's a lot more of these are red now,
1:01:17SPEAKERwhich-- - We've tiered up some stuff.
1:01:19SPEAKER- For whatever reason is the color,
1:01:20SPEAKERthey get marked when they're ranked.
1:01:21SPEAKER- 'Cause that means they're dead to us,
1:01:22SPEAKERwe don't have to think about 'em anymore.
1:01:23SPEAKER- Yep.
1:01:24SPEAKER- Should we run down the list, should we run down the tiers?
1:01:27SPEAKERAre we, let's see, I think you posted a version
1:01:29SPEAKERof the spreadsheet last week, we'll do that again
1:01:31SPEAKERto this one in the show notes, right?
1:01:32SPEAKER- Well, in fact, that link will still be accurate,
1:01:34SPEAKERI believe. - Oh, okay.
1:01:35SPEAKER- Like that'll just-- - Wow.
1:01:37SPEAKER- That'll just update, let's see.
1:01:39SPEAKER- Some people are getting a preview.
1:01:40SPEAKER- The power of, oh God, I didn't think about that.
1:01:43SPEAKER- Yeah. - Maybe I should unpublish
1:01:44SPEAKERthat. - Maybe.
1:01:45SPEAKER- All right, let's get into it, S tier.
1:01:48SPEAKER- Yeah, S tier, what do we got?
1:01:49SPEAKER- XLR, B and C, SCART and Lightning?
1:01:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:01:54SPEAKER- That might be provisional, I'm not sure.
1:01:55SPEAKER- I think that, I don't feel good about Lightning
1:01:57SPEAKERbeing an S tier, I'm just gonna say that.
1:01:58SPEAKER- I could see that being an A, anyway, let's move on.
1:02:01SPEAKER- I'll just move it down to A just for now,
1:02:03SPEAKERsince you said you could see it there.
1:02:04SPEAKER- Currently in the A tier is TOSLINK/SPEDIF,
1:02:08SPEAKERHDMI, display ports, and quarter inch audio.
1:02:13SPEAKER- We have a lot of dead space in the A tiers,
1:02:15SPEAKERnot getting filled up.
1:02:16SPEAKER- Yeah, well look, a lot of cables left.
1:02:19SPEAKER- That's true.
1:02:19SPEAKER- Are there a lot of A tier cables?
1:02:21SPEAKERI'm not so sure, but.
1:02:22SPEAKER- I feel like I don't like any cables, is the takeaway.
1:02:26SPEAKERI'm moving stuff up to the top of the tiers.
1:02:29SPEAKER- Okay.
1:02:29SPEAKER- What's in the B tier, Brad?
1:02:31SPEAKER- B tier currently is FireWire, USB3 Type-B,
1:02:35SPEAKERVital B, USB Type-B, the C13/C14 IEC power cord,
1:02:42SPEAKERand the eighth inch or 3.5 millimeter audio jack.
1:02:46SPEAKER- I think that's a respectable list of B tier cables.
1:02:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I think so.
1:02:51SPEAKERC, we've got Mini, TOSLINK, IDE, and SCSI 50-pin.
1:02:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:56SPEAKER- D, we have got the 30-pin Apple dock,
1:02:59SPEAKERthe Apple desktop bus, and the USB3 Micro B, the wide micro.
1:03:04SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:03:05SPEAKER- And it all works.
1:03:06SPEAKER- Currently, still the lone F tier cable connector
1:03:10SPEAKERis the PS2 port.
1:03:11SPEAKER- And it's just a note, it's at the bottom of the list,
1:03:13SPEAKERjust on general principle.
1:03:15SPEAKER- That still feels weird to me,
1:03:17SPEAKER'cause in my memory, the PS2 port was crucial,
1:03:22SPEAKERin a crucial era of gaming.
1:03:24SPEAKER- Well, you know, it's a-
1:03:26SPEAKER- With the benefit of historical hindsight,
1:03:27SPEAKERI guess I see it.
1:03:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I think if you had to use it today,
1:03:31SPEAKERyou'd feel differently.
1:03:32SPEAKER- Probably, although again, some people still do use it.
1:03:36SPEAKERAnd on that note, I guess our rankings come to a close
1:03:39SPEAKERfor this week.
1:03:40SPEAKERAgain, we're gonna do something else next week,
1:03:42SPEAKERbut if people are enjoying this, please let us know.
1:03:44SPEAKERAnd if you're not, also let us know,
1:03:45SPEAKERwe appreciate all of that.
1:03:48SPEAKERYeah, but I think next week, CES stuff,
1:03:51SPEAKERCES is happening, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, all have big events.
1:03:55SPEAKERIf they're just talking about AI crap,
1:03:57SPEAKERI think we're not gonna talk about any of it,
1:03:58SPEAKERbut I think there's gonna be new video cards
1:04:01SPEAKERfrom Nvidia, Brad.
1:04:02SPEAKER- It sure does seem like it.
1:04:03SPEAKER- That's the word on the street.
1:04:04SPEAKER- And there are new Intel cards out there
1:04:07SPEAKERthat we have not talked about
1:04:08SPEAKERthat I'm sure you have got some insight into.
1:04:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I've done benchmarks on them.
1:04:12SPEAKERLike if you need, just to be clear,
1:04:14SPEAKERif you need a $250 video card,
1:04:18SPEAKERthat Intel card rips, is really good.
1:04:20SPEAKER- I don't want to just burn next week's episode now
1:04:22SPEAKERnecessarily, but like having seen people out there
1:04:25SPEAKERlike seeking out Intel GPUs, like going like,
1:04:28SPEAKER"Oh man, they're sold out everywhere.
1:04:29SPEAKERLike when are they coming back in stock?"
1:04:31SPEAKERHas been mind bending.
1:04:32SPEAKERLike to see Intel GPUs selling out
1:04:35SPEAKERand be highly sought after
1:04:36SPEAKERis just hard to wrap my head around.
1:04:38SPEAKERIt's kind of cool to see some,
1:04:39SPEAKERit's a legit new competition in the space.
1:04:42SPEAKER- So Brad Charcus over at PC World
1:04:44SPEAKERwho reviewed video cards for them for years,
1:04:46SPEAKERthe other Brad in my life,
1:04:48SPEAKERhad said that it's like, it's the first time since the 1060
1:04:52SPEAKERthat he's been excited about a card in this price tier.
1:04:54SPEAKER- Wow.
1:04:55SPEAKER- In that it's a really good,
1:04:56SPEAKERlike you're getting really good performance for the price.
1:05:00SPEAKERAnd it's like a super capable 1080p card
1:05:03SPEAKERand even good at 1440p in a lot of games.
1:05:07SPEAKERSo highly recommended.
1:05:09SPEAKER- Very conspicuous space in the market for that
1:05:11SPEAKERfor some time now has not been filled.
1:05:13SPEAKER- Yeah, we can talk about it more,
1:05:15SPEAKERbut we did benchmarks against a 1080 or 1080 TI,
1:05:19SPEAKERcan't remember which one, but, and it's capable.
1:05:23SPEAKERIt's more capable in a lot of ways than that
1:05:25SPEAKERbecause it also supports XeSS
1:05:27SPEAKERand all of their kind of like AI upscaling
1:05:30SPEAKERand AI frame generation and all that stuff.
1:05:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:05:33SPEAKER- And it does, and you can do ray tracing.
1:05:35SPEAKERThis is the other thing is you can do ray tracing
1:05:36SPEAKERat 1080p with that card.
1:05:37SPEAKER- Wow.
1:05:38SPEAKER- And it works in games like Cyberpunk and stuff like that.
1:05:41SPEAKERSo yeah, we were blown away by it.
1:05:43SPEAKER- Very cool.
1:05:45SPEAKER- This is the part of the show though,
1:05:46SPEAKERI guess where we remind you that we're listener supported.
1:05:49SPEAKER- We are.
1:05:50SPEAKER- We wouldn't be here without you all, the listeners.
1:05:51SPEAKER- We wouldn't.
1:05:53SPEAKER- So if you're at home, you're yelling at the car
1:05:55SPEAKERand the radio about what jackasses we are
1:05:57SPEAKERfor putting SCART so high on the list,
1:06:00SPEAKERor, you know, that the Apple desktop bus
1:06:02SPEAKERwas maybe the best thing you ever used
1:06:04SPEAKERand they should bring that back.
1:06:06SPEAKERFirst off, we're sorry, but thank you.
1:06:08SPEAKER- You've got some burning experience,
1:06:11SPEAKERburning story with that 30-pin SCSI connector
1:06:13SPEAKERthat nobody's ever seen that you just wish we knew about.
1:06:16SPEAKER- Yeah, and I'm gonna say, like, this is an ongoing project.
1:06:19SPEAKERI'm open to bribes.
1:06:20SPEAKERIf people wanna bribe me, if you feel like we would need
1:06:22SPEAKERto move some stuff higher or lower, let me know.
1:06:24SPEAKER- Well.
1:06:25SPEAKER- I can send you a Venmo, whatever, you know,
1:06:27SPEAKERwe'll figure it out.
1:06:29SPEAKERBut in lieu of that, you can also subscribe to the Patreon,
1:06:31SPEAKERwhich helps support us and helps keep the show going.
1:06:33SPEAKERWe appreciate everybody who backs the Patreon,
1:06:36SPEAKERall of our patrons.
1:06:37SPEAKERYou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:06:40SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:06:43SPEAKERAnd for five bucks a month, you get access
1:06:45SPEAKERto the TechPod Discord, which is full of people
1:06:47SPEAKERwho had a really good conversation about this episode,
1:06:49SPEAKERthe last entry in this episode.
1:06:52SPEAKER- Yeah, people have opinions about cables,
1:06:54SPEAKERit turns out.
1:06:55SPEAKER- Yeah, lots of them.
1:06:57SPEAKERAnd also talk about all sorts of other stuff,
1:06:59SPEAKERlike whether it's what's going on in technology.
1:07:02SPEAKERThe Food Channel has been a wonderful disaster for me
1:07:05SPEAKERfor the last couple of weeks, 'cause I've been watching
1:07:07SPEAKERwhat people have been making over the holidays.
1:07:08SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
1:07:10SPEAKER- And you can join that community, too.
1:07:14SPEAKERWe also do a monthly Patreon episode,
1:07:15SPEAKERwhere we talk about things and stuff.
1:07:17SPEAKERThis month, we kinda just like, I don't know,
1:07:19SPEAKERI feel like we had a ramble about the holidays,
1:07:22SPEAKERand also DNS and other server stuff.
1:07:27SPEAKER- And a lot of institutional school food preparation.
1:07:30SPEAKER- Yeah, we talked a lot about rectangular pizza.
1:07:33SPEAKERThat video's taking the internet by storm.
1:07:35SPEAKEREvery Discord, every place I am,
1:07:37SPEAKERis talking about the rectangular pizza right now.
1:07:39SPEAKER- Really?
1:07:40SPEAKERI should go look at how many views that thing has now?
1:07:42SPEAKER- I'm sure it's on fire.
1:07:43SPEAKER- It's a potent subject for people of a certain age.
1:07:46SPEAKER- Everybody has feelings.
1:07:47SPEAKERMy wife and I were like, we should make
1:07:48SPEAKERthe rectangular pizza, and my daughter was like,
1:07:51SPEAKERI'm not gonna eat that pizza, it looks gross, dad.
1:07:53SPEAKERAnd so, there you go.
1:07:55SPEAKER- It's not that bad.
1:07:56SPEAKER- I bet if you used nice cheese, it would be delicious.
1:07:58SPEAKERAnyway, this is the part of the show
1:08:00SPEAKERwhere we thank our executive producer to your patrons,
1:08:02SPEAKERincluding Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippitt,
1:08:05SPEAKERBunny, 20.3 gigabits per second,
1:08:09SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, David Allum, and James Kamik.
1:08:12SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:08:13SPEAKEROh, and Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:08:16SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
1:08:17SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you.
1:08:18SPEAKERAnd thanks, everybody, for listening,
1:08:20SPEAKERand thanks, as always, Brad.
1:08:23SPEAKER- See you next week.
1:08:24SPEAKER- And remember, please consider the environment
1:08:27SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.