USB has been available for ages, but in my experience, I have never come across such an unstable and buggy interface.
I've got a number of USB devices because the older interconnects such as parallel and SCSI are slowly being phased out by peripheral manufacturers.
What I can't understand is why, despite this, these peripherals have constant problems.
My family and I have 5 PCs between us - and a whole slew of USB devices, including printers, digital cameras, mice, a digital radio and a zip drive. With the only exception of one digital camera, every single peripheral has problems with at least one PC - either the device just isn't detected, or the PC crashes during driver installation, or communication is lost after a few minutes. One PC (based on an Abit KT7) will not work with any USB device (the motherboard has been RMAd 2x - both replacements do the same) - I've tried printers, mice, cameras, a zip and a scanner - none work at all.
Similarly, I though USB was supposed to have intelligent power management - I've tried several hubs, and, without fail, plugging in more devices than the hub has power for will result in an immediate BSOD. It doesn't matter whether USB error detection is enabled or not - the same happens.
I just wasted half a day yesterday trying to get a lexmark printer working after upgrading my Mum's PC - I changed the old i810 mobo for an Asus A7n266 - The printer would go crazy (flashing lights, and thrashing heads) when plugged into the nforce board. Needless to say, it was not detected by windows. When connected to the i810 board - it was perfect. Clean install of Windows (ME or 2k), Driver updates, BIOS flashes, and printer firmware updates failed to fix the problem. In the end the only solution was to replace the printer.
The intel boards have by far the fewest problems, my only via board completely fails to work at all, and a nvidia board has some incompatibilites. It looks like a lot of people need to put a lot of work into USB to make it a useful interconnect.
I've got a number of USB devices because the older interconnects such as parallel and SCSI are slowly being phased out by peripheral manufacturers.
What I can't understand is why, despite this, these peripherals have constant problems.
My family and I have 5 PCs between us - and a whole slew of USB devices, including printers, digital cameras, mice, a digital radio and a zip drive. With the only exception of one digital camera, every single peripheral has problems with at least one PC - either the device just isn't detected, or the PC crashes during driver installation, or communication is lost after a few minutes. One PC (based on an Abit KT7) will not work with any USB device (the motherboard has been RMAd 2x - both replacements do the same) - I've tried printers, mice, cameras, a zip and a scanner - none work at all.
Similarly, I though USB was supposed to have intelligent power management - I've tried several hubs, and, without fail, plugging in more devices than the hub has power for will result in an immediate BSOD. It doesn't matter whether USB error detection is enabled or not - the same happens.
I just wasted half a day yesterday trying to get a lexmark printer working after upgrading my Mum's PC - I changed the old i810 mobo for an Asus A7n266 - The printer would go crazy (flashing lights, and thrashing heads) when plugged into the nforce board. Needless to say, it was not detected by windows. When connected to the i810 board - it was perfect. Clean install of Windows (ME or 2k), Driver updates, BIOS flashes, and printer firmware updates failed to fix the problem. In the end the only solution was to replace the printer.
The intel boards have by far the fewest problems, my only via board completely fails to work at all, and a nvidia board has some incompatibilites. It looks like a lot of people need to put a lot of work into USB to make it a useful interconnect.
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