In article et,
"Dave Liquorice" writes:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 14:44:11 +0000, Lobster wrote:

When are these things going to get at least half-way standardised to
avoid having to have so many lying around?

USB (nominal 5v up to 500mA) is slowly creeping in as a defacto standard
on many things but frequently without the smarts that really should be
there for proper negotiation to get 500mA. How kit behaves when connected
to something that doesn't current limit to 100mA without negotiation seems
to be a little variable.

I've never yet seen a USB port which actually polices
the current draw against what's been negotiated.

However, some phones detect the difference between about 5V
and 5.5V in order to detect if they're plugged into a real
USB port (5V) in which case they limit their current draw
to low levels, or mains adaptor (5.5V) in which case they'll
do things like fast charging at much higher current draw.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]