What are ancient usb connections? Type A? B?

How are you going to download photos from your USB Nikon camera to your USB iPod Photo if you don't even have a UC-E6 to 30-pin dock connector cable?

Mini-B cables can be somewhat hard to find.

There was also the Micro-A which I found on some dev boards. I think the Arduino Due (Arm Cortex M3 chip) used one for the USB host port as well as an Atmel Arm uc board.

Also that weird, really small USB connector that was found on some early digital cameras. I think Kodak was a big user of it. Sorta looked like a narrower and taller version of the Mini-B. Maybe the Mini-AB but that doesn't look like it. I have one in my box at home.

Old digital cameras just used non standard usb shapes so they are almost impossible to find now.

Ah, they were proprietary then. I thought they were an early standard that lacked a 5th pin.

Since school started this year, I bought both my kids TI-84 plus CE calculators. Both were being sold cheap because “no charging cable” (uses a mini-B) while I had a dozen in a box.

I wish that happened a lot less as I have entirely too many old cables.

I hold on to my precious few mini-Bs. They also seem to have a tendency to break.