Generic USB 2.0 hub showing up as USB 1.1

  • Thread starter Thread starter Yousuf Khan
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Yousuf Khan

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
 
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.
Click to expand...

Once upon a time, if it was "Made in Taiwan" it was known as crap too
;)

I don't think it's really fair to say that just because the hub is
made in China, it must be of poor quality. As you noted yourself, even
a $30 Belkin hub is likely to come from a China factory. The key
difference I find is whether the company that holds the brand, are
they willing to pay for better quality and more stringent controls.

I met a non-PRC owner of a factory in China via my partner once. He
mentioned to us very frankly that he has no choice but to cut corners
in order to stay competitive with less scrupulous factories. But
usually it's also made clear to the customers if they want cheap, what
they should expect and if they want better quality stuff, it won't be
dirt cheap. I'm not sure if all factories make that point to their
customers but ultimately, the fact remains you do get what you pay
for.
 
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?
Click to expand...

I can almost guaranty that an operating system can't leave any USB hub
(fixed).

Can you compare the data transfer rate of the hub in question while in XP
to that in linux? Take a large file say 100 megs and transfer it from an
external drive and time it. I'd like to see which is faster, XP or linux
or if it;s the same.
 
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
Click to expand...

Crappy cable? I've seen a few times a 2.0 device gets downgraded to
1.x when connected with a substandard cable. A good quality cable
(try Belkin) solved it for me.
Oh, one more thought - check where the hub in question was made. If
it's China, that explains it. If they deliberately use led paint for
children's toys (saves a fraction of a penny per toy vs. non-toxic
one), and conveniently forget to put cord into tires (saves both
material and labor - a few bucks total per tire - who cares if people
die when it blows out), you can expect similar "quality" materials and
workmanship from the hub.

NNN
 
Yousuf Khan said:
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
Click to expand...


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.

Are both of these a self-powered hub (i.e., they have a power adapter)
or a low-power hub that relies on the current supplied from the USB
controller at the motherboard? If they are bus-powered hubs, they
CANNOT be on the same USB controller. Each controller provides 2
ports (channels) but these 2 ports still share the same controller and
so both are limited by a total amperage that can be supplied by the
same controller. That's why you see USB ports in pairs but you have
to watch how much current is drained by them together. Bus-powered
hubs or any other bus-powered devices will tax the low current
available from the USB controller, so instead make sure to use
self-powered USB hubs, especially considering that you are planning to
connect more than just 2 USB devices to the same controller (and
possibly not just low-powered USB devices). Initially a USB device is
allowed to draw 100 mA but that device may request more power for
upstream devices in increments of 2 mA but up to a maximum of 500 mA
(and that is across the pair of ports to the same USB controller).
For a bus-powered hub, the connected devices may only use a total of
400 mA (100 mA per port) so the hub is limited to 4 ports. If using
bus-powered hubs, make sure you are using low-power USB devices (or
the high-powered USB device provides its own power supply that is
connected to a bus-powered hub). USB devices rated for bus-power draw
can be used on a bus-powered hub (but watch the total draw across both
USB ports to the same controller). The number of bus-powered or
high-power devices that you connect to a self-powered hub depends on
how much current that hub can deliver.

USB devices are supposed to report their power consumption. Maybe you
hubs don't. Or maybe they report too high a consumption to guarantee
USB 2.0 mode to work so the controller degrades to USB 1.1 mode.

Do you actually have any high-speed USB 2.0 devices connected to the
hubs when you boot the OS with the self-powered hubs already powered
up? Are they really high-speed USB 2.0 devices (USB 2.0 compliant
devices can report as low, full, or high-speed)?

For best setup, use self-powered hubs, or connect them to different
USB controllers (i.e., they don't share the same port pair coming from
the same USB controller).
 
Meat said:
I can almost guaranty that an operating system can't leave any USB hub
(fixed).

Can you compare the data transfer rate of the hub in question while in XP
to that in linux? Take a large file say 100 megs and transfer it from an
external drive and time it. I'd like to see which is faster, XP or linux
or if it;s the same.
Click to expand...


Well, that's not going to be likely to do. Since the newer hub is so
unreliable, I'm only trusting it with light duty at the moment, such as
mouse and keyboard connections, nothing data-heavy like external HDs, or
thumbdrives.

Yousuf Khan
 
Crappy cable? I've seen a few times a 2.0 device gets downgraded to
1.x when connected with a substandard cable. A good quality cable
(try Belkin) solved it for me.
Click to expand...

Worth a shot, I have tried moving the hub from one port to another, but
it made no difference.
Oh, one more thought - check where the hub in question was made. If
it's China, that explains it. If they deliberately use led paint for
children's toys (saves a fraction of a penny per toy vs. non-toxic
one), and conveniently forget to put cord into tires (saves both
material and labor - a few bucks total per tire - who cares if people
die when it blows out), you can expect similar "quality" materials and
workmanship from the hub.
Click to expand...

Isn't everything made in China these days? Avoiding Chinese made hubs
might be like trying to avoid any Swiss chocolate made in Switzerland.

Yousuf Khan
 
VanguardLH said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
Are both of these a self-powered hub (i.e., they have a power adapter)
or a low-power hub that relies on the current supplied from the USB
controller at the motherboard? If they are bus-powered hubs, they
CANNOT be on the same USB controller. Each controller provides 2 ports
(channels) but these 2 ports still share the same controller and so both
are limited by a total amperage that can be supplied by the same
controller.
Click to expand...

Both can be self-powered or bus-powered, they have the power inputs.
Only one of them came with an included power cord though. And
surprisingly it's the less reliable one that has the power cord. The
more reliable one doesn't have one. I have tried that one with and
without the power cord, but it made no difference.

I have resorted to putting my fast peripherals on the older hub, such an
external hard drive, a digital camera, and a Skype phone. They all have
their own power cords so they don't need to be powered by the hub
anyways. The hard disk and camera show up under the mass storage device
class.

The slower hub is being used for slow peripherals like mice and
keyboards now.
USB devices are supposed to report their power consumption. Maybe you
hubs don't. Or maybe they report too high a consumption to guarantee
USB 2.0 mode to work so the controller degrades to USB 1.1 mode.
Click to expand...

Both are reporting 100mA.

Yousuf Khan
 
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Yousuf Khan said:
Isn't everything made in China these days? Avoiding Chinese made hubs
might be like trying to avoid any Swiss chocolate made in Switzerland.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

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 said:
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.
Click to expand...


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
Click to expand...

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 said:
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?
Click to expand...

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
 
Once upon a time, if it was "Made in Taiwan" it was known as crap too
;)
Click to expand...

Is there a motherboard not made in Taiwan (except for the crap made in
mainland China)?

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
 
Is there a motherboard not made in Taiwan (except for the crap made in
mainland China)?
Click to expand...

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.
 
Is there a motherboard not made in Taiwan (except for the crap made in
mainland China)?
Click to expand...

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? ;)
 
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? ;)
Click to expand...

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
 
in message
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.
Click to expand...


Sounds like it is time to toss the flaky old USB hub and get an new
one for $7.
 
AFAIK Asus makes Asus-branded boards in Taiwan, and Asrock-branded in
China.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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