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Want to know what's in your computer?

NickD on Sun December 26, 2004 10:01 AM User is offline

Try this site and download AIDA32:

AIDA32

Found this when attempting to do a search to learn if one of my computers has USB 1 or 2 that was made when the change occured, didn't get the answer to this question, but gots tons of other bits of useful data. It's free and loaded nicely with no crashes, but you know how that goes.

What I found useful is learning the bus speed of my computer and real names of the thousdands of *.dll files on my box, always wondered what those dlll's were.

Does anyone know of a program that identifies your USB type?

FrankS on Sun December 26, 2004 9:02 PM User is offline

Nick, check out this site. I think your question is answered here.

http://www.everythingusb.com/usb2/faq.htm

NickD on Mon December 27, 2004 8:29 AM User is offline

I am still going around in circles Frank with this USB thing, I got on the Intel site, essentially downloaded the same chipset drivers, least the same name as those that came with windows, and noticing much faster HD speeds. I wonder if MS chops these down like defrag and scandisk that are licensed from Nortons and are short versions of speed disk and disk doctor.

Their are benchmark programs for testing the results of these devices such as internet and bus speeds, was looking for something similar to USB. Many of the sites I have visited recommend going to control panel systems and looking up whatever driver is installed as being the guide mark, that is kind of stupid. I am also teed off at my cable company for rising the rates without any choice on my part for increasing the bandwidth to 384 KBytes per second, ha, that would be the day, get on some sites and lucky to hit 1KByte per second.

Intel makes USB chips, but haven't been able to learn what kind of hardware I have in my box with some kind of benchmark test. What I don't know is if USB 2 hardware will work with a supplied USB driver. Other sites suggested reading the literature that came with the device, ha, that is like reading newspaper headlines.

As opposed to your listed site costing 99 bucks for a USB 2 conversion, I have found four port USB PCI cards with drivers on ebay for eight bucks, but really haven't done any benchmark tests. But worked on MB's without USB ports incorporated, who knows at what speed. But they work and give a spot to plug in a USB cable.

Ha, the design of the USB plug itself is a bad joke and further verifies that PC stands for poor connectors. It just slides in with no interlock and slides out just as easily, is made perfectly symmetrical so you can't tell which way to plug it on. Not easy when most computers have the ports at the rear. Plus they charge a fortune for these cables, 20-30 bucks, hell the damned things cost more than a printer, strange when you can buy a USB mouse for six bucks and it already comes with the cable. You are not suppose to disconnect a USB plug until told to do so, but on a notebook, that sucker will just fall out causing a crash and lost of data. A guy can only wonder why a USB cable is more than twice the price as a parallel port printer cable that can be locked in and has 25 soldered pins as opposed to just four.

Was hoping to find some kind of software that stated what kind of USB hardware I had in my box and the latest driver with some kind of brenchmark test. Will have to keep on looking.

MrBillPro on Mon December 27, 2004 9:48 AM User is offlineView users profile

Nick, my friend bought me this usb 2 card reader for my 256 san disk digital media card and I actually made a mounting bracket for it out of an old cd rom base and then with the old dremel tool cut out an area to fit it through one of the plastic case covers in front it looks factory, but what I was going to tell you is man does it download the pictures "FAST" a ton faster than my HP camera using the usb cable that come with it, I would even go as for as saying probably more than twice as fast I guess that usb 2 is a good thing, but this is the only hardware I have that is usb 2. My Soyo motherboard was already geared for usb 2 but it would not work until I installed sp 1 guess it had the drivers with that service pack, if the scanners and printers and etc. make as much difference as my card reader I may have to at least get me a usb 2 scanner soon although my scanner now is probably only a year and a half old.

-------------------------
Don't take life seriously... Its not permanent.

NickD on Mon December 27, 2004 10:26 AM User is offline

Ha, screw ebay, got on pricewatch and many are selling a four port PCI card for five bucks including shipping. The average price on ebay is over 15 bucks with shipping or even more. My major problem with my main computer is that I ran out of PCI slots a long time ago, LOL, have too much junk in it.

So what the heck is firewire, LOL, can't keep up with all this new stuff, I also ran out of bays on my computer, but guess I could cut into the front panel for front access.

FrankS on Tue December 28, 2004 11:12 PM User is offline

Nick, I was responding to your question of how to determine what USB type was on your computer. Did you catch the following question and answer in the web site I posted? Hope this hellps.


How do I know if my PC has USB 2.0? Add Your Notes
You can identify whether your PC has Hi-Speed or not relatively easy. Open Device Manager and expand the Universal Serial Bus section. There should be an ?Enhanced? USB host controller present.

Windows 98 systems may use a different name, because Hi-Speed USB drivers in these operating systems are not provided directly from Microsoft (Windows ME, 2000 and XP get their drivers through Windows Update).

These drivers are provided by the manufacturer, and may carry the maker?s name (i.e. ADS, Belkin, IOGear, Siig, etc.). There should also be two ?standard? version USB host controllers present as well. They are embedded in the USB chip which routes the differing USB speeds accordingly without user intervention.

There are currently 6 manufacturers of the Hi-Speed USB host silicon themselves:
ALi (Acer Labs)

Intel

NEC

SiS

VIA

nVidia (shows as ?Standard? controller ? see illustration above)

Any other brand name that appears in Device Manager would likely be an add-in Hi-Speed USB PCI card. The makers above do not make add-in cards, but they do make the chips that are used in them.

NickD on Wed December 29, 2004 7:59 AM User is offline

I gathered from reading more in the Intel site that Intel does not write the drivers, MS does, and they further state that MS does not write USB 2.0 drivers for Win98SE. They recommend to buy a third party card and use the USB 2.0 drivers that come with the card.

They also distinguish between the various names given to USB and namely the icon on the connector, they say such words as high speed or ultra USB may not meet the USB 2.0 specification that not only works at 480 Mbps, but at 12 and 1.5 as well. What got me started is loading the USB drivers for my Canon A75, no where in the manual do they state what speed the photo transfer is being made at. But my guess is at the 1.5 Mbps speed as it took forever to download the photos. Ha, just removed that off my box and sticking with a flashcard reader that is almost instantaneous.

Was curious as to how they were cranking 480 MHz through that cable, the case is the shield, a twisted pair is used for ground and 5 volts, and two 28 AWG fine wires are used for a one way data path where they gave the maximum impedance, basically the USB device can talk to the host through one data wire and the host can talk to the USB device through the other. They claim 127 USB devices can be wired in, but with a limit of about 100 ma per device, still a bit unclear if the USB cables can really supply 12.7 amperes to all of these devices. A five meter long cable appears to the be maximum as the signal loss is in the neighborhood of 7 db.

My point is that Intel offers software to identify your processor and chip set and even recommends the best drivers, but they don't have anything that identifies what kind of USB hardware you have in your box, MS simply selects what they feel is the best driver and to do that I would have to load XP on my box. Another solution would be to buy an Intel MB as those are supported at least with the drivers.

Ha, my problem is that I am a control freak, I like to be in control of the vehicle I drive and the computer I use, but those days are becoming history. What they don't mention with all this automation, is what do you do when you have a problem, you are pretty much screwed when something goes wrong, and all this stuff does go wrong.

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