Electrical – Connecting wires

Since transformers by their nature are bi-directional, the selection of the primary side totally depends on your input voltage and desired output voltage.

The transformer you describe likely has multiple taps on the "primary" side, may have multiple windings on the "primary" side and likely has multiple windings on the secondary side. Start with a low range DMM, and check for continuity between different leads on each side of the transformer. Once you have mapped continuity, check resistance between the same leads. You should be prepared for the transformer to be as complex as this:

The "secondary" side may be a single coil with multiple taps, or it may have multiple outputs more like the above example.

Once you've reverse-engineered the coil arrangement, you'll need to determine the turns ratio between each set of coils. I would NOT recommend your 120VAC test for this. Start with a much lower (and safer) voltage. Find a small "wall-wart" type power supply that you can sacrifice. The lower the output voltage the better. You want it just for its transformer, not the rectification and regulation components, so if you can find an AC-output wall-wart, you can use it's output as-is. What you want is a low voltage AC source that you can use to test individual windings. Note that applying a low voltage AC source to the "secondary" may result in lethal voltages on the "primary", so be careful!

Find one set of windings to apply your AC input to, and measure the resulting output on each set of coils and on each tap. Transformers are ratiometric, so the relative voltages will be the same using your low voltage AC test vs. when you identify the intended primary winding and apply 115VAC to it.

Doing this, you should have a good sense as to what windings are present that the relative turns ratio between each. Good luck!

A USB Type C receptacle — what you would be plugging your modified cable into — is prohibited from supplying power until certain conditions are met.

This is necessary to prevent damage from two devices supplying power being connected to each other with a C to C cable.

You can use a regular USB A male cable with an A to C adapter, which has the necessary pulldown resistor to be recognized and enable Vbus, or you can add that resistor between CC and GND to your cable, but that will require you to test which wire goes to which pin which may be hard without more test equipment.

Of course, as has always been the case, it is incorrect to draw more than 100 mA from a USB port without negotiating for more power or detecting a battery-charger type port.