Hardware Insights Forum

These aren't as outright horrible as others mentioned, but I still have some doubt about their legitimacy:

This one, if I recall correctly, came with a Palsonic TV set some years ago. The design of the plug appears to be copied from Phino (which can also be found rebranded "Powermaster", like the off-white cord shown here), although the C13 end is dissimilar. It just about survived a 10A load, although the plug pins got very hot. It's quite a stiff cord, as were two I had with the same plug but in H03VV-F and with a different C13 end. I've now cut it apart to recover the copper (27 grams of it, between the 3 cores)…

I don't know what device this one came with. It seems OK under load (some warmth at the ends, but not dangerously hot). The connector designs actually match those shown on the website of Hou Ta, so maybe it's just a real cord of less-than-stellar quality.

And a not-so-dangerous Fan-Jet cord (one which actually survives 10A, even if it gets quite warm)? The "(star)544001" might even be a standard of sorts, having seen a few cords from different manufacturers with that same code. (The design of the really dodgy "Fan-Jet" cords is nothing alike, for the record.)

Some of the navy PATA and FDD cables bundled with Gigabyte mainboards (in the final years of supporting PATA and an internal FDD) also had copper-clad steel cores, in both cases 0.2mm diameter solid (about 32AWG). The manufacturer isn't even named. Sure, for the floppy you can get away with almost anything, but with PATA/100 (or 133 although you're supposed to use the yellow cables for that IIRC) I'd be more cautious.
ASUS did the same, although theirs at least stated the manufacturer (Keen Top) and admitted to being 32AWG (though with no mention of CCS).
If anyone here has experience actually running those cables at full speed, let me know.

Granted, for signal wires conductivity is often less important than strength; but if the PATA specification allowed CCS (I doubt it) then why wasn't it the norm?
I don't care, I have more of these than I can use anyway so I'll just keep the proper copper cables…

2 out of 3 newer Honglin VGA cables also have mostly-steel cores, with only the overall braid and R/G/B/H cores remaining copper (but their drain wires are steel). Which in a way, suggests that they did actually think it through; none of the other lines (vertical sync, ID or DDC) are critical (with the possible exception of +5V on pin 9, if you have something which actually draws some current from it).
For the moment, I'll keep the other unit (though I still prefer the older thick VGA cables containing complete coaxial cores for the RGB)…

Long widespread on BS 1363 counterfeits, they were going to get to Australia eventually.
Here's one which came with a tricolor studio light (which also has a fuseholder unsafe for mains):
In the Kaifeng power-boards (with their raised earth contacts) only the insulated part will touch; contact in other sockets will be unpredictable.
Not that it matters in this case, because the cable is only 2-core anyway (as the text lets slip):
Being 5m long, it should be H05VV-F3G1.0 for full IEC compliance.
The wires are at least copper, but much smaller than claimed (0.11mm diameter, 22 strands in active/23 in neutral for 0.21/0.22mm²) so get very hot at 10A.

Clearly they just gave up on this one:
The pins also measure >18mm long (should be about 17mm) suggesting they're positioned further-out than intended; but even so, the insulation on proper pins should extend deeper inside. Wires inside are as wispy as the other DHT counterfeits, and the PSU it came with looks no safer:
Anyway, later I'll see if either item can survive the rated load

This came with my Segway-Ninebot G65 MAX scooter; it's not really a counterfeit, but still defective:
The PVC overmolding is also rather unclean:
The rest of this cord looks OK (the now-cut end looks to genuinely be H03VV-F3G0.75) so I'll keep it in case I ever need to make a C14/E to C5 lead (in which case my Belling-Lee plug will come in handy again ; we've already discarded the towel rail I last fitted it to, as that was rusty).
But if you go to Segway-Ninebot's site, they're asking rather a lot for it (I just substituted one of my own spares, which is H05VV-F3G0.75 too)

The scooter itself hasn't exactly performed up to expectations either, but that's another story…