Generic USB 2.0 hub showing up as USB 1.1

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:01:01 -0800, archmage@sfchat.org (Nate Edel)
wrote:

>In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Isn't everything made in China these days? Avoiding Chinese made hubs
>> might be like trying to avoid any Swiss chocolate made in Switzerland.
>
>Depends on if by China, you mean both Taiwan and the PRC or just the PRC.
>For that matter, since "made in" usually means final assembly, there are
>probably some from Thailand and Malaysia too.

Taiwan is OK, it's the mainland that produces cheap crap. Yet what
else could be expected? Nobody looks at China as a producer of
quality goods - that place is reserved by EU, Japan, and USA, with
countries like S.Korea and Taiwan trailing pretty close. The only way
for China to plug into wider world's economy was as the cheapest of
the cheapest, with hopes to eventually make it up the top later as it
was done by Japan in late 1970s and arguably by Korea around the break
of the millenia (imho they are not there yet, but getting very close -
typed he while staring into Samsung monitor, and a damn good one;-)
While their labor was cheaper than dirt they had a luxury to follow
the specs - as much as their skills and tools allowed. These days
when labor there is just dirt-cheap they have to cut all the corners
they can because "made in China" label commands no pricing power, and
$ gets cheaper day after day. And yes, some posters are right that
sometimes there is only choice between "made in China" and nothing
else - the Chinese crap squeezed everyone else from the market because
nobody else can sell sooo cheap. For most buyers a hub is as good as
another hub. Just a quick look at PW: no-name USB 2.0 hub can be had
for $7.61, and Belkin starts at around $30 (even this one still can be
made in China!). What would buy Joe 6pack when he was told by his
techie neighbor that he needs a USB 2.0 hub to connect all his toys to
the box?

NNN

"Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6tidnXGw-9eXeuraRVn_vwA@giganews.com...
> VanguardLH wrote:
>> Have you visited the manufacturer's web site to get the specs on
>> those USB hubs? Having the same hardware (i.e., chipset) says
>> nothing about how the manufacturer utilized that hardware. Lots of
>> analog modems use the same Conexant chip but the *cards* don't have
>> the same feature set. Same subsystem components do not enforce the
>> same system features. Could be one of the hubs really only is 1.1
>> compliant and that using it as a 2.0 device is not recommended. Of
>> course, the device could be just a crappy low-grade cheap unit that
>> doesn't properly respond to report itself correctly, or you need a
>> better USB cable.
>
> Well, as I said previously, these are "generic" hubs, very generic.
> I doubt any of us have heard of the manufacturers' names: there
> isn't much point in checking their websites, they probably sell tons
> of little products. One is from Vantec and the other is Acrox. The
> Acrox is the older more reliable one. Both of them are advertised as
> USB 2.0 hubs, and both of them are identified as "USB2.0 Hub"
> internally, polled from the USB configuration itself.


Vantec is not a small company but that doesn't mean everything they
sell is something they themself produced but might instead have
slapped their label on it (http://www.vantecusa.com/). The current
USB hub selections are shown at
http://www.vantecusa.com/product-peripheral.html. They do seem
confused between what is self-powered and bus-powered hubs (what they
say for self-powered is actually for bus-powered).

Have you tried swapping to which USB ports these hubs are connected
(i.e., swap them between themselves) to see if the problem stays with
whatever hub in on a USB port or if the problem migrates with to
whichever port the hub gets moved? That is, does the problem move
with the hub or remain with the USB port?

> I have two generic 4-port USB hubs that are supposed to be USB 2.0
> compliant. The older one is fine, works as advertised. Meanwhile the
> newer one sometimes shows up under the USB 2.0 root hub (i.e.
> "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller"), or usually it shows
> up under the slower "Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller" (USB 1.1).
>
> My motherboard (Asus M2NPV-VM) USB ports are all USB 2.0 compliant,
> and they individually auto-detect whether they need to switch down to
> USB 1.1 speeds. I'm using a Microsoft tool called UVCView under
> Windows XP to display the details of the USB devices, including the
> hubs and roothubs.
>
> According to UVCView, the older hub and newer hub seem to have the
> same chipset vendor (idVendor = "Genesys Logic, Inc."), although
> externally they look quite different and have different brand names.
> So I'm not sure why one would be consistently USB 2.0 compliant, while
> the other one is not.
>
> Now another interesting thing I noticed is that the inconsistent hub
> will only show up as USB 2.0-compliant after I boot into Windows after
> having previously rebooted from Ubuntu 7.10 Linux (dual-boot system).
> So maybe Linux does something to the device that puts it right. But
> when I list the devices while in Linux I see that it is listed under
> USB 1.1 just like when in Windows. I have no idea why Linux leaves the
> hub fixed for Windows, but doesn't fix it for itself?!
>
> Any idea what's going on with this hub?
>
> Yousuf Khan

What you may want to do since you are running an Asus board, is go into
Bios setup on bootup before your OS loads. Under one of the tabs across
the top, there is a check for "I am using an OS that checks for plug and
play" or something like that. It may be that your Bios is not setting
the USB ports and allow only the operating system to do that. It sounds
as if Windows is setting the USB port/hubs and then you switch into
Linux. Anyway, might be worth a try.

VanguardLH wrote:
> Have you tried swapping to which USB ports these hubs are connected
> (i.e., swap them between themselves) to see if the problem stays with
> whatever hub in on a USB port or if the problem migrates with to
> whichever port the hub gets moved? That is, does the problem move with
> the hub or remain with the USB port?

Yeah, moving the cables around throughout all of the USB ports was the
first thing I tried. The problem moves with the hub, not with the USB port.

I've even tried a different cable as suggested elsewhere in this thread.
It didn't help. However, as I said before, going into Linux and then
rebooting into Windows fixes it for some inexplicable reason. So far
this trick has worked 100% reliably.

Yousuf Khan

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:02:37 GMT,
a?n?g?e?l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com (The little lost angel) wrote:

>
>On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:34:02 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
><mygarbage2000@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Taiwan is OK, it's the mainland that produces cheap crap. Yet what
>>else could be expected? Nobody looks at China as a producer of
>>quality goods - that place is reserved by EU, Japan, and USA, with
>>countries like S.Korea and Taiwan trailing pretty close.
>
>Once upon a time, if it was "Made in Taiwan" it was known as crap too
>

Is there a motherboard not made in Taiwan (except for the crap made in
mainland China)?
<snip/>
>
>--
>A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
>Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,

Once upon a time, during the heydays of Detroit Big 3, Japanese cars
were the butt of the jokes - and deservedly so. The times have
changed...

Happy New Year to everyone

NNN

In article <c3ein3hlo91ft38qj6kuv0m84chq4om8l4@4ax.com>,
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips, mygarbage2000@hotmail.com says...
> On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:02:37 GMT,
> a?n?g?e?l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com (The little lost angel) wrote:
>
> >
> >On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:34:02 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
> ><mygarbage2000@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Taiwan is OK, it's the mainland that produces cheap crap. Yet what
> >>else could be expected? Nobody looks at China as a producer of
> >>quality goods - that place is reserved by EU, Japan, and USA, with
> >>countries like S.Korea and Taiwan trailing pretty close.
> >
> >Once upon a time, if it was "Made in Taiwan" it was known as crap too
> >
>
> Is there a motherboard not made in Taiwan (except for the crap made in
> mainland China)?

Apple? Tyans used to be made in the US. They're from Taiwan now
too, IIRC.

Al lot of Taiwanese motherboards are made in mainland China now
too, not that many were better when made in Taiwan.

--
Keith

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:57:09 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
<mygarbage2000@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Is there a motherboard not made in Taiwan (except for the crap made in
>mainland China)?

On a quick look, Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Foxconn and Tyan all have boards
made in China as well as Taiwan. Do you consider all of them crap?

--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,
Lost to the world, Lost to myself

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:45:54 GMT,
a?n?g?e?l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com (The little lost angel) wrote:

>On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:57:09 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
><mygarbage2000@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Is there a motherboard not made in Taiwan (except for the crap made in
>>mainland China)?
>
>On a quick look, Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Foxconn and Tyan all have boards
>made in China as well as Taiwan. Do you consider all of them crap?

AFAIK Asus makes Asus-branded boards in Taiwan, and Asrock-branded in
China. I would believe that other makers have a similar scheme where
low end stuff is sent for manufacturing to China, and high end to more
decent locations. Though admittedly it's more than a year since I've
bought the last mobo, and things could've changed...

NNN

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
news:0uSdnbXQJLm6LOXa4p2dnAA@giganews.com...
> VanguardLH wrote:
>> Have you tried swapping to which USB ports these hubs are connected
>> (i.e., swap them between themselves) to see if the problem stays
>> with whatever hub in on a USB port or if the problem migrates with
>> to whichever port the hub gets moved? That is, does the problem
>> move with the hub or remain with the USB port?
>
> Yeah, moving the cables around throughout all of the USB ports was
> the first thing I tried. The problem moves with the hub, not with
> the USB port.
>
> I've even tried a different cable as suggested elsewhere in this
> thread. It didn't help. However, as I said before, going into Linux
> and then rebooting into Windows fixes it for some inexplicable
> reason. So far this trick has worked 100% reliably.


Sounds like it is time to toss the flaky old USB hub and get an new
one for $7.

On Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:20:06 +0000, nobody@nowhere.net rearranged some
electrons to say:


> AFAIK Asus makes Asus-branded boards in Taiwan, and Asrock-branded in
> China.

Not true. I recently (within the past 6 months) acquired two of the same
model ASUS motherboards (P5NE-SLI). One was assembled in Taiwan, one was
assembed in China.