
Cursed Adapters - dsr_
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224206741602062336
======
jfim
The SIM card one is actually used by SIM card developers, I've had a few of
those on my desk in a previous life.

Basically, when developing applets for SIM cards, it's a lot easier to deal
with plugging in a full sized SIM card in a large slot than dealing with a
tiny modern size SIM card, especially when dealing with multiple handsets.

The testing process with a handset is simply to write the applet on the card
using a full sized smart card reader, then take the card, put it in the
handset and boot it. With the adapter, the steps of putting the card in the
handset and taking it out are much easier, since there's no need to move a
tiny card and extract it using a tool.

~~~
exikyut
Speaking solely from a position of outside naive curiosity, how does SIM card
applet development work, why/where is custom development needed, and what sort
of security considerations (are|need to be) taken into account?

For example, I can settle doctor's appointments etc with what looks like a
perfectly ordinary card terminal; I swipe my healthcare card and after a
_long_ sequence of button-presses by the (very patient) receptionist I get a
receipt with the Medicare logo etc on it (this is in Australia). I've always
wondered if all the logic to do this is hiding in the SIM card or if the card
terminal is also running specialized firmware.

The only bit of related anecdata I can remember was... wait, I don't believe
it but I found it, probably one of the more interesting bits of applet
development out there:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140208)
(the entire thread is a bit of a rabbithole too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328))

~~~
jfim
You can think of SIM cards (and other chip cards, like bank cards) as a low
power computer; they run their own embedded OS and can install applets. The
applets basically run on a tiny restricted JVM (no GC!) that follows the
JavaCard profile.

SIM card applications can talk with the handset through messages, asking the
handset to display menus, send SMS messages, open a browser, and more [0]. The
handset also forwards certain messages to the SIM card, such as certain
special SMS messages. The SIM card can actually be reprogrammed over the air
(slowly) using signed SMS messages.

The applications that run on the SIM card can include certain banking
applications (those were popular in countries with less robust banking
infrastructure and wide deployments of feature phones) or multi-carrier SIMs.

With regards to your card, if it gets swiped, it probably doesn't use a chip.
For the chip to work, it has to be powered, which entails either being
physically inserted in a slot or being powered through induction.

I should probably write a blog post about all of this stuff, it's pretty
interesting. Thanks for reminding me of it!

[0]
[https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/101200_101299/101267/08...](https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/101200_101299/101267/08.17.00_60/ts_101267v081700p.pdf)

~~~
exikyut
I would definitely be very interested in a generalized inside view of how
everything works!

I stumbled on some PCMCIA-slot card readers at one point, which led me on a
fun adventure discovering that I can list recent transactions out of my bank
card. (Then after losing my wallet (annoying but not tragic) I discovered (to
my initial confusion) that the latest model doesn't include this nice
"feature". Hmph.) Learning how bankcards worked was very interesting.

And - facepalm - of course the terminals I referred to are running their own
firmware: Medicare cards do indeed use magnetic stripes.

I'm currently headscratching over how authentication/access cards work, and
the associated various industry thrashings (standardization, PGP crypto,
cloneability, etc).

------
walrus01
Probably 80% of those are hack solutions intended to prolong the service life
of weird embedded/industrial x86 systems.

If you go far enough down the rabbit hole of weird embedded system component
makers, and system integrators (mostly Taiwan based) you'll find all sorts of
weird stuff. The sort of pieces you'd use to build a x86 system running a
complicated thing in a factory or industrial process, or a kiosk... Armored
stainless steel keyboards, fanless systems with big heatsinks built into the
chassis, and so forth.

~~~
sneak
If you dig through the twitter history of the account linked to (one of the
best on twitter, I might add) you will find many examples of exactly this type
of industrial hardware.

------
jolmg
> have you ever thought that the real problem was that the front and back of
> your computer are backwards?

I do, actually! I thought I was alone in that.

I have my PC with the back facing the front. I actually flipped it to stop it
from overheating from having the vents be against the walls, but I really like
the easy access to the ports. It also makes opening the side panel easier,
since they tend to be made to slide towards the back.

~~~
lpghatguy
Does that mean your power button is facing the wall?

~~~
marcosdumay
Set the computer to start on a keyboard press.

I lived for years with a desktop with a broken power button. Didn't miss it.

~~~
mariuolo
> I lived for years with a desktop with a broken power button.

Why couldn't you replace it?

~~~
rfrey
Because

>Didn't miss it.

~~~
marcosdumay
Yes, that.

Initially, I didn't replace it because I had no time to go buy another on that
day. Then, because of that.

------
uk_programmer
[https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220346988949504/photo/1](https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220346988949504/photo/1)

[https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220403821764608](https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1224220403821764608)

These sort of adapters are used a lot by people like myself who muck around
with retro hardware. No need to rely on hardrives that are 20-30 years old.
Just plug in an adapter in and then swap out SD / CF cards.

There are even CF to ISA card adapters that you can buy in kit form:

[https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/tag/xt-ide/](https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/tag/xt-ide/)

However the market is obviously very niche.

~~~
Zenst
Exactly that, I don't have a link but SCSI adapters to SD card's are used by
many retro hardware people and they love them for that. I don't have a link to
the device but a review of one here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1mu7TPtE8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx1mu7TPtE8)

~~~
uk_programmer
I watch that guys channel from time to time. A lot of this stuff is easier
thanks to forums and Youtube tbh.

------
pintxo
Cannot help myself, but am reminded of the famous electric to water adapter:
[https://etel-tuning.eu/werkzeug-zubehor/183-adapter-
drehstro...](https://etel-tuning.eu/werkzeug-zubehor/183-adapter-drehstrom-
auf-gardena.html)

~~~
andrewflnr
I can't read German, so I can only assume that's a joke... What the heck is
going on there?

~~~
avian
It’s a joke. For some reason people like making these fake Gardena adapters.

Here’s a water-to-HDMI one:
[https://imgur.com/FHSFM9o](https://imgur.com/FHSFM9o)

------
scoutt
Why the negativity? Why the _" OH FUCK YOU - FUCK YOU, IT EXISTS (author
words)"_ tone when there are entire markets/areas where retro-compatibility
and weird conversions are a requirement?

I know that an average user won't buy many of these adapters, but for a person
doing that kind of research, is it really that weird? I mean, the author is a
_" Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death
Generators."_

We're retrofitting 18K devices with SSDs through a M2-to-USB converter (we
have reasons to do it that way). Someone is selling my company 18K of those
boards. So, not bad at all. And that's just us.

~~~
krilly
This isn't even a strange adapter, I'd be surprised if this didn't exist. Why
not get excited about cassette tape to 3.5mm adapters (very real and also very
useful)?

~~~
mindcrime
_Why not get excited about cassette tape to 3.5mm adapters (very real and also
very useful)?_

I use one of these nearly every day, since my truck doesn't have an aux-in
jack, but it did come with a factory cassette tape player.

------
ranger207
A lot of these seem pretty useful in certain circumstances. A lot of the
"[whatever] to USB header" ones could be used for the boot drive so you can
use all of your drive bays for data. I've seen servers with internal USB and
SD ports for exactly that purpose, but if you don't have one, these could be
useful.

~~~
notatoad
I agree, a lot of them do seem useful, but I do admit that the situations
where I might have found them useful were situations where I was doing dumb
stuff.

------
vxNsr
> _And here 's another one that's weirder and weirder the longer you look at
> it. So it's a 5.25" bay mounted hard drive, but it's a RAM disk._

 _Now a RAM disk is when you use some RAM like a disk, but this isn 't on the
motherboard, so... how is it RAM? how does it connect?_

 _see when they call this a RAM disk, they really mean it on the "DISK" part.
It's SATA! It's a SATA drive you use like any other drive, it's just fast as
hell because it's backed by RAM!_

 _but doesn 't RAM lose its contents when turned off?_

 _YEP! that 's why it has that big honking battery there, it keeps the RAM
active when the PC is turned off._

I wonder how long that battery lasts for, also I guess wiping your data is
easy... just unplug the battery, no way anyones gonna get at your data then.

~~~
aidenn0
These things were excellent back when flash had poor density and mediocre
speeds; the cost per MB was similar when fully populated and it was
significantly faster.

~~~
vxNsr
They were actually used? by who?

~~~
p_l
Caches, scratch drives for compilation or whatever other disk intensive
process you had, etc.

Heavy industrial models were the ancestors of today's all-flash SAN arrays,
later common in hybrid ram+flash. RAMsan was one of the major vendors.

~~~
elFarto
CCP used one for Eve Online. They stuck their SQL server on it.

~~~
p_l
I think I've seen some in person in 2008 used for, IIRC, some form of
coordination in Oracle RAC.

~~~
vxNsr
without any idea what a SAN array is was this used as a kinda hybrid ram,
where you'd keep all your data on a real harddrive and then on system boot
push it all to this where it would stay for years until the next system boot?

~~~
p_l
No. SAN = Storage Area Network. Essentially networked _block_ devices. a
RAMsan array would terminate multiple 1-4Gbit links and provide a very fast
block device (possibly subdivided into logical devices) that would be used by
other computers.

The contents were persistent, through battery storage + UPSes etc.

------
bathtub365
My favourite cursed adapter is the Etherkiller, a mains plug connected to an
ethernet cable:
[https://i.imgur.com/oQBaNQL.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/oQBaNQL.jpg)

~~~
saagarjha
Sounds like a Power over Ethernet thing?

~~~
NamTaf
It's PoE, I _guess_ , if you treat any concept of standards compliance with
dismissive disdain to the point of intentional malice.

------
asveikau
I kinda want something with a lot of microSD slots and it exposes each one as
a separate disk. Then I could run a zfs pool on spare/discarded SD cards
around the house.

The closest thing I found was something claiming to do something like SD slot
raid-0. But the board does all the work, and raid-0 is terrible. And the whole
point for me is that SD cards have terrible failure rates, so I figure zfs
adds redundancy.

~~~
orev
A company made one of these a while ago, and it was awful. Linus Tech Tips has
a video on it. The market is just too small and there are so many better
options that it’s not worthwhile to make.

~~~
floatboth
No, that one doesn't expose them as separate disks, that one is hardware raid
0

~~~
orev
The overarching point is the same. The utility of such a device is so small
and has such a small potential audience that no one would make one (at least
with any reasonable quality).

If you really want it, get a USB hub and full each port with an SD card
reader.

~~~
asveikau
I think you described the raid-0 device I was describing. Whoever came up with
the idea for that device, I can say with confidence, does not understand the
failure rate of SD cards and the mathematics of why raid-0 is a bad idea.

You are right though in this "overarching" point that it is very niche and you
can probably have a decent solution with USB. I would think that might get a
little more clumsy and consume more power than a single board exposing all
slots though.

------
undersuit
So there's mini PCI-E and there's mini PCI-E(SATA). The SATA one is just
directly connected to a SATA controller, when you look for storage devices for
the mini PCI-E format that's all you find thanks to it's prolific use in
laptops.

The other mini PCI-E is just a 1x PCI-E channel... or a USB connection, when
you look for items to connect to mini PCI-E you find Wifi and 3g/4g cards and
something like this:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJ45JXD](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJ45JXD).
Now one day in my searches I did find some Intel Flash drives that were used
for ReadyBoost duties on some Windows laptops, but they lack a flash
controller and you need a special Linux kernel module to even use it which
breaks my want to boot from the mini PCI-E device.

Since the industry went the m.2 route the mini PCI-E slot is dead and dying.
You can even get m.2 adapters for Wifi([https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-
ax200h-m-2/p/0XM-00JK-00063](https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-
ax200h-m-2/p/0XM-00JK-00063)) or FPGA([https://numato.com/product/aller-
artix-7-m-2-fpga-module](https://numato.com/product/aller-artix-7-m-2-fpga-
module)) because it's more universal than a standard PCI-E slot now.

This ramble is to nominate mini PCI-E as a cursed connector.

------
loudandskittish
Unrelated, but is there a reason I now suddenly have to click "Show Thread"
every time someone links to a Twitter thread now?

~~~
bepvte
No, but there are several "thread unroller" sites to make reading these things
easier.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Does anyone have a link to those pages that turn twitter threads in to normal
blog posts?

~~~
tastroder
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224206741602062336.html)
should work

------
jedberg
This gave me flashbacks. In the 90s I had to work with a lot of strange
hardware. They all had "standard" interfaces, but they weren't really standard
at all.

Sometimes to connect my laptop to a device required a series of three or four
adapters.

We also had kits in the office to make your own serial adapters, where you had
to figure out the pinouts on each side and then build the adapter one pin at a
time.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
This is now usb-c. Its a standard plug that supports somewhere between
everything and just usb 2.0

~~~
phh
Nope. The usb-c on rPi doesn't do usb 2.0.

I think that when plugging an usb-c into an usb-c, we can assume it won't
explode, but that's pretty much it. And I wouldn't totally bet on it.

~~~
nfriedly
The Pi4 actually does support USB 2.0 over the Type-C port, it just needed a
software update to enable it. See
[https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-
gad...](https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gadget/)

------
tenant
Twitter is such a shitty website to have to look at anything on that's bigger
than a tweet.

~~~
gambiting
Yeah, I saw one message a picture and went "that's it??", But then discovered
it has a view thread button and there's more hiding there. Such a bizzaire UI
experience.

~~~
MrRadar
I really hate that new "feature" too. I don't get why anyone would want it.

Edit: I think I figured it out. I think it's supposed to make it easier to see
replies to the linked/original tweet which you would otherwise have to scroll
all the way down to the bottom of the page to see. The problem is that they
implemented it backwards. It should show the thread by default and give you an
option to see the non-thread replies to the current tweet instead.

------
PascLeRasc
I went through a real cursed search last summer trying to find a series of
adapters to connect an Apple Cinema Display, which only has an attached mini-
DisplayPort male cable, to a standard PC with only HDMI and DVI. Female mDP to
male DP exists, but there's no way forward from there to convert male DP to
male HDMI/DVI. I stumbled across female-DP to female-DP, which I thought was
my holy grail until it couldn't power on the display. I learned about the
difference between active and passive DisplayPort that day.

Eventually I just bought a different GPU that had mini-Displayport.

~~~
nixpulvis
Just try connecting a modern Mac to FireWire 400...

You gotta go:

FireWire 400 -> FireWire 800 -> Thunderbolt 2 -> Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C).

Madness.

~~~
bzzzt
Seems like Apple has 'deprecated' the Firewire stack in macOS. Catalina works,
but don't count on it being available much longer.

Btw, the FW->Thunderbolt conversion adds a noticeable amount of latency to my
audio interface :(

~~~
rasz
At least it doesnt outright drop packets like the USB audio on modern macs.

------
marcosdumay
Well...

Header adapters are not meant for PCs, they are there for specialized boards.
There are plenty of those.

That USB to ISA adapter, why would anybody buy the reverse nowadays? There
aren't many computers with an ISA bus, but there are plenty of old specialized
ISA boards that would cost a fortune to replace.

About that DDR4 extender, I have a computer where the processor cooler
inutilized a memory slot (stupid motherboard designers?). I just left it
empty, but could have used one of those too.

And... Ethernet into M.2 is plenty of interesting. I wonder how useful can it
be.

~~~
numpad0
I’ve read somewhere that manufacturers use extenders as replaceable
receptacles for testing. The slots are rated for so many insertion/removal
cycles so you’d want them replaceable.

~~~
rasz
That is precisely what the sodimm slot is for. Most service centers use those
for memtesting.

------
sandinmyjoints
I misread this as Cursed Adopters, and thought it was going to be about users
who, when they use a technology, seem to encounter more trouble than the
average user--a kind of inverse of early adopters.

------
peterburkimsher
I use an SD female to microSD male, plugged into a PQI Air Card (which can use
Dmitry's hacked Transcend firmware to run Ubuntu), inside an iPod.

Some of these adaptors are useful for geeks like me!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819)

~~~
captn3m0
The photos on the thread are down. Could you re-up them?

~~~
peterburkimsher
Sorry about that! I'd run out of space on my Google Drive, so I deleted some
files last week. I've reuploaded the photos to Mega.

[https://mega.nz/#F!75cTSYwZ!d5VYSECvYXXbd_yLCvwPsw](https://mega.nz/#F!75cTSYwZ!d5VYSECvYXXbd_yLCvwPsw)

~~~
peterburkimsher
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/albums/721577133...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/albums/72157713343408792)

------
joshu
downthread there's a USB-ISA adapter (lets you use ISA boards via a USB port)
and that was so odd I chipped in actual money to see it happen

~~~
raverbashing
This is the really cursed one

And of course you'll still have to fiddle with the IRQs on the boards you plug
and have a USB to ISA bridge(?) driver and I can't imagine how to make an ISA
driver talk to a virtual bus over USB

Suffice to say if it was the other way around I think ISA wasn't fast enough
for USB 2.0 so at least there's that

~~~
rasz
The one ISA-on-USB I saw some years ago came with SDK and you had to write
your custom software for it, no transparent automagic isa mapping on PC.

------
rwmj
I really could have used a SD-card to USB headers adapter back when I was
trying to put a bigger boot drive inside my QNAP NAS. It has a USB header on
the motherboard which normally has only 512M of storage on it, which is rather
too small for a normal Linux distro. I ended up with a USB key hanging out of
one of the USB ports at the back which is way less elegant.

------
jerrysievert
I've had several DOM (disk on module) devices over the years, but I think that
the one that I loved the most was the SIMM to DIMM adapter, which adapted
multiple SIMM instances to a single DIMM slot when the transition occurred.
beautiful piece of tech for the time.

~~~
rasz
Never seen anything like that :o Plenty of 4x30 pin to 1x72pin adapters tho,
both front and back facing so you can run a pair together.

------
robotnikman
I actually used the microSD to SD adapter before in my old Galaxy Note 3.
Since the Note 3 had a removable back which you could use to access the both
the battery and microSD card slot unlike most phones today, I replaced it with
one normally used with a Zerolemon extended battery, and used it with a 512GB
SD card since microSD cards did not come in sizes that large at the time.

------
markchristian
I really wish Foone had a blog.

~~~
fanf2
[https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128](https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128)

------
walrus01
> have you ever thought that the real problem was that the front and back of
> your computer are backwards?

This is a real market for telecom stuff, and one of the reasons shallow depth
1U and 2U servers with all of their connections on the front panel exist.
Including power, whether ac or DC, network, indicator lights, and all the
common ports found on an atx motherboard.

------
dmitshur
Meanwhile, all I want is a simple high-DPI gaming mouse with a USB-C (rather
than USB-A) connector, and it still doesn’t exist in 2020.

~~~
heelix
Not sure about high performance mice, but Amazon does have some USB-C mice. I
picked up for my daughter to play Stardew Valley on her mac. Was looking to
avoid the daisy chain of adapters rather than a high sampling rate.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BMLJBJ8/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BMLJBJ8/)

~~~
dhosek
Who uses non-Bluetooth mice now?

~~~
Polylactic_acid
People who enjoy latency free and battery free mice. If its at a desktop there
is really no reason to not use a wired mouse. And a wired keyboard is
basically essential since bluetooth doesn't work before the OS has booted.

~~~
emptysea
Not super scientific but Linus Tech Tips has a video comparing the latency of
wired and wireless mice:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8)

TL;DR: wireless and wired gaming mice have the same response times, but normal
wireless office mice have slower response times than their gaming
counterparts.

~~~
NamTaf
My biggest issue with wireless office mice is that if the laptop de-
prioritises bluetooth interrupts due to CPU load or whatever, then you get
this really laggy response. I'm not entirely sure exactly what's going on, but
if I open something heavy on my work laptop the mouse will have a 0.5-1 second
delay in responding.

This doesn't affect the touchpad, which I presume is running over a different
protocol that has more real-time interrupts.

------
ohmyblock
Few years ago I replaced my Ipod's broken hard drive with a compactflash card
using a strange adapter, it works great.

------
exabrial
Missed a realy useful one: Apple SSD to M2.

------
floatboth
> I'LL TELL YOU WHY NOT 4 MICROSD CARDS:

> BECAUSE YOU COULD FIT A FUCK TON MORE ON THERE!

LTT did a video with this product a couple years ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frnBoqqI_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frnBoqqI_Q)

------
hatsunearu
SDIO? I have no idea how this works. Does the M.2 SSD have some sort of
fallback mode to talk over SDIO or does it emulate an SD card interface? If
it's the former is there an SDIO driver for M.2 SSDs?

Lol

------
basicplus2
Everything should have an adapter to connect back to RS232

~~~
raverbashing
Reminds me of some PS4 or Xbox (I think) reverse engineering video where they
they tunneled PCI-E over RS232

(around 8m15s)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA)

------
serf
PCI PS/2 adapters were quite common when they were needed, just like PCI USB
adapters a few years later. I don't know if i'd call them cursed.

------
Noxmiles
I really love the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT, connected to all GPIO Pins, with
seperate USB cable! :D

------
asdkljas
made my day. Ima gonna archive all of them to my evernote collection in case I
do need one of them!

------
lvturner
Is it just me, or are none of the images loading on twitter?

Edit: they loaded in the end, it was just very slow

------
ginko
I only see one adapter (M2 to SD) and some random tech tweets. Am I missing
something here?

~~~
edvinasbartkus
Click on "Show thread"

------
yummypaint
Looking forward to the fake m.2 drives on amazon and ebay built with this

------
ChrisArchitect
just noticed this is a thread from Feb 3. Not that it's not interesting, but
was wondering I couldn't find it in foone's recent stream. (an HN re-submit I
take it)

