Powered USB hub question

[EvanW]

Hi all,

With the placement of my computer in a refurbished Golden Tee cab and the design of the CP (I built on the existing design of a pull out CP and flip up lid) my USB cables for my 2 U360's, 3" Happ trackball, USB spinner, ipac4, and PACLED are all too short to reach the computer. I thought about purchasing a powered 7 port USB hub. Because the hub only plugs into 1 USB 2.0 hub on the machine will there be any issues with assigning devices? Or will the machine (XP) see it a USB card? Want to make sure before I pull the plug on 70 bucks.

Thanks for any help,

Evan
 

[Le Chuck]

Providing that you don't unplug things there "shouldn't" be issues.  Check out DRVENTURE's troubles with multiple USB and how he resolved it.  I'm working through similar issues right now. 

I assume you don't have 6 USB ports but if you have 4 you may be better off buying extension cables and a 4 port powered hub.  Belkin has one for $19.  The more you can plug directly into the CP the better. 

[Spacedueler]

On my modular CP, there are currently several mice, at one time I had 3 joysticks too. PC is running Windows XP Home. Since it's a modular panel, while getting it set up I was always plugging and unplugging devices - so I got pretty familiar how they registered in Mame. Now every thing is configured (i.e. Super Sprint: P1 dial = Mouse 6X, P2 dial = Mouse 5X). Some devices are plugged into the powered usb hub, some are plugged straight to the PC usb ports. It doesn't seem to matter for me if they are plugged into the PC or the hub. What matters is that they are all plugged in when I boot the PC. If I were to power down, change all the devices to different usb ports and then reboot, they always seem to get the same assignment every time. I actually have 2 powered hubs, and it doesn't even matter if they're plugged into one or the other.

What will affect the assignments is removing one device. If power down, remove the mouse that was previously mouse 1, all of the assignments will change on up to the last one (mouse 2 becomes 1, 3 becomes 2 etc.)

[HanoiBoi]

You said that length is an issue and gave a list that seems to require 6 ports, but you didn't specifically state the number of ports on your PC.  If you do have enough ports on the PC, longer USB cables is your best bet.

And monoprice would be your best place to start.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/search.asp?keyword=usb+cable&x=0&y=0

[nick3092]

If I were to power down, change all the devices to different usb ports and then reboot, they always seem to get the same assignment every time. I actually have 2 powered hubs, and it doesn't even matter if they're plugged into one or the other.

What will affect the assignments is removing one device. If power down, remove the mouse that was previously mouse 1, all of the assignments will change on up to the last one (mouse 2 becomes 1, 3 becomes 2 etc.)

My experience with my modular panel is that MAME/Windows assign the numbers based on the USB vendor/device ID. The lower the vendor ID, the lower number control it becomes. Doesn't matter what port or hub it's plugged into.

[Green Giant]

I was paranoid about powered USB hubs so I bought many many USB extension cables from monoprice.com.  They are super cheap and the computer never gets confused.

[Dawgz Rule]

I work in IT.  Powered hub shouldn't make a difference.  Even with enough ports in the PC, a powered hub can sometimes be a better choice if you don't have a good power supply in the PC.  Otherwise, you can have overload your power supply.  The most important thing is to ensure that all the devices are plugged in when you boot.  If not, your device ID's can change and cause issues for MAME. 

[Spacedueler]

My experience with my modular panel is that MAME/Windows assign the numbers based on the USB vendor/device ID. The lower the vendor ID, the lower number control it becomes. Doesn't matter what port or hub it's plugged into.

I wondered how the usb devices were "tagged" with an ID of some sort, and that it had to be numbered some how... sort like a MAC address?

The most important thing is to ensure that all the devices are plugged in when you boot.  If not, your device ID's can change and cause issues for MAME. 

Exactly. That's why I made it so the devices are always connected - just the interfaces are swapped out:

[drventure]

Just saw this. Yes, I've wrestled with USB issues and powered hub issues for a while.

The key with Powered hubs is to make sure the powersupply for the hub can actually supply enough current to fully power all the connected devices. MANY MANY hubs, esp 7 port or more, come with powersupplies that won't fully power all the ports, under the assumption that you won't really ever need to.

While that is USUALLY true, it's not necessarily always true.

Whether you put a powered hub in or not, I haven't noticed much of a diff regarding where you plug your devices in (ie a hub or directly into the mobo). In reality, those ports on the mobo effectively +look+ like they're connected to another hub, it's just internal, built onto the mobo.

If you can keep all the devices plugged at all times, you should be good, but if you use devices that will be unplugged (say, light guns, or handheld controllers, etc), you'll likely end up with mapping problems.

The devices do get "numbered" and I believe they are initially numbered based on the vendorid/deviceid, but if you hot plug devices, all that can go out the window pretty quick.

That's why I wrote the ControllerRemap utility, it allows you to setup a mame cfg file that maps directly to device IDs or names, not to device numbers. So no matter where a particular controller ends up mapped, it'll still "mean" the same thing to Mame.

[Le Chuck]

Thanks for the input DRVENTURE.  I'll be playing with it this weekend when I have a bit of time.  Besides the lightguns being miss mapped I'm running into my spinner getting bumped if I run joytokey, which has my joy1 mapped as a mouse for the windows environment.  When I reenter mame, it's messing things up.  I think I have a fix for that but I'll probably PM you or start a please help me thread once I delve into your utility.  Thanks for all the work man!

[EvanW]

Thanks for all the help guys. I went with cable extensions because I do have enough ports on the back of the computer. (

Evan