On 7/2/2019 9:42 AM, John McGaw wrote:
It has to be that these things are breeding. There used to be a joking
theory that wire coat hangers were reproducing and trying to take over the
world but it seems that computer cables are in the game now.

Do you find that your stock of cables is expanding without your knowledge?
I just looked in the closet in my "office" and found a bag of unexplained
USB cables -- mostly A to B types -- that really shouldn't be there. I
already had a rack on one wall holding cables and I swear that there are
twice as many now as there were a year ago -- all sorts of cables, not just
USB but video, power, extenders, and who knows what else. I'm almost afraid
to look in the downstairs "closet of computing antiquity" for fear of what
will be there now.

What does on do with such excess? Does dumping them at the recycling center
help?

After posting this I spent some time going through one batch of
cables/adapters/whatever trying to make some sort of sense of the whole
mishigas. Did pretty well being able to sort out four or five
definitively-identifiable batches hanging the useful ones on a rack and
putting the excess into plastic bags and storing them away.

It all went well until I got to two really odd cables that I'd never seen
before. At first I thought they had to be some sort of video. On end of
each had a sorta-rectangular connector with 6(?) pins. The other end of one
had an identical connector while the other had a truly weird connector
about the size of an old mini-USB but looking like it had been crushed.

Long story short: I finally identified these as FireWire. No freakin' idea
where they could have come from since I don't have and have never had any
Apple hardware. Anyway, now I'm able to wrap them up together and stuff
them in the downstairs closet of computer antiquities. Of course, some day
I'll have to sort through that but the last time was a few years ago and,
with luck, it will be that long again...