I am currently trying to wire my old laptop webcam to a USB cable in order to use it with my PC, but all the USB cables I cut so far only had two wires (red and black) and I need one with four (white, green, red, and black). Since I'm really running low on USB cables, is there a way to tell whether a USB cable has two or four wires inside of it other than cutting it in half?
11 Answer
Use a multimeter to check for continuity. Outer, longer pins in a standard USB type-A plug are power pins. Two middle pins are for data. If you can find a corresponding pin in the other plug, then there's a wire connecting them.
If you don't have a multimeter, use the cable to connect two devices that would communicate over the data lines (ie. the cable isn't used just for charging). If the device works, there are data wires in the cable.
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