[NBLUG/talk] Intermittent USB controller failure

[Lincoln Peters]

On Sun, 2005-01-30 at 03:24 -0800, Mitch Patenaude wrote:
> I had a problem very similar to this on my Mac Cube, using my USB 
> speakers and the USB hub built into the apple flat-panel display.
> 
> When the speakers were blaring loud music for prolonged periods (the 
> only way to code... with blasting trance/techno), then the built-in hub 
> would overheat, and that would cause it to fail intermittently.  This 
> would have several consequences.  First, my keyboard/mouse would become 
> unresponsive (since they were on the same hub), second, the sudden 
> disappearance of integral hardware would occasionally cause kernel 
> panics.  Since I moved the speakers to USB ports on the main box rather 
> than using the built-in to the monitor, then I've had no problems.  
> While this was in MacOS X 10.2, the intermittent nature of the problem 
> leads be to believe that it's a hardware problem.
> 
> So.. the first thing to check is power hungry devices hanging off that 
> port.  Other than that, i don't have much wisdom to offer.  If the 
> power-hungry device just can't be removed, then consider borrowing a 
> USB 2.0 compliant hub with external power supply so you can see if that 
> aliviates/affects the problem.

My computer has 4 USB ports (presumably provided by an internal hub on
the motherboard), one of which is attached to a 7-port external hub, and
another is attached to a 4-port external hub.

The 7-port hub has an external power supply, and is attached to a mouse,
a floppy drive, and a CD burner.  Sometimes I also attach a flash drive
to it.

The 4-port hub also has an external power supply, but there is nothing
attached to it right now.  Up to about 24 hours ago, I had two external
hard disk enclosures attached to it (each had its own power supply), but
I moved those hard drives inside the tower after I started having
problems.

Furthermore, I usually notice these failures first when my mouse freezes
up (my keyboard attaches to a PS/2 port).  I've tried moving the mouse
to a different ports when this happens, both on the external hub AND on
the root hub, but nothing seems to work.  I am forced to reboot, at
which point everything works once again.  I'm pretty sure that these
failures have NOT caused any kernel panics.

So maybe the root hub itself is overheating?  I've been working on
improving the cooling within my tower, but now it looks like I have
ANOTHER reason to do so!

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

Words must be weighed, not counted.