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Powered USB 1.0 Hub? Is that enough?
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lanman31337:
I'm impressed.  Before we phased out our 270s, we were going through motherboards every 3-6 months on those.  The help desk loved it when I had 20-25 machines to call in because of bad motherboards.  They had a new revision with some solid caps, but the row in the back by the fan they still kept the regular caps and they would blow.  Go figure.
Mysterioii:

--- Quote from: mcseforsale on April 12, 2012, 01:46:42 pm ---Awesome, thanks!  If I do an aimtrak, I'll def. power it from the PC or external power supply. 

--- End quote ---

Nah, you won't need to.  The aimtrak (at least in the default shell) doesn't have a recoil solenoid so you'll have enough juice for normal operation.  Now, you could fit it into a custom shell that has recoil, but I didn't mess with that, I just got the stock one Ultimarc sells.

Haha just a few months ago my old development machine at work died... and it was a Dell Optiplex (not sure of the model).  All of a sudden the fan started spinning faster than any I've ever seen, so much that all the old dust was blowing like 3 feet out the back... I thought it was smoke...  Opened the case and it had 2-3 fully blown electrolytic caps and about 5-6 more that were bulging.   ;D  I took it home though, may be able to use the video card and PSU out of it for something.  Possibly pull a few other components off of it (connectors maybe) put probably not much useful to me.  DVD and hard drives I guess.
mcseforsale:
I certainly don't envy hardware dudes nowadays.  Being an old fart in this business (I'm 41, but I've been in the biz for 22 years), I just don't want to keep up with the hardware changes anymore.

Fortunately, I've been developing installations for 10 years or so.  First in .EXE, then in .MSI and now in virtual spaces.  So, about the only time I have to deal with hardware is if someone wants to know what the OS is reporting (enumerating he hardware keys, or USB keys in the reg is pretty standard stuff).

I feel old before my time!

AJ
drventure:
About USB and power, the main things you have to remember is that each usb port is "speced" for +at most+ 500ma of current. Actually, it may be only 450ma. Not exactly sure.

Your optipac, keywiz, as well as trackballs, and USB sticks like the U360 won't come anywhere near that.

BUT...

LEDWizes are another story.

The board itself only draws 50-100ma, but then you have to count each LED you attach, and they're typically 20-50ma EACH, and each RGB counts as 3 leds!

Also, say you pick up a nice 7 port hub. If you look closely at the wall wart that comes with it, you may find it grossly underpowered.

For instance, I picked up a cheapo 7 port hub once, the PS was marked as 1amp.

That means that if I wanted to fully power any devices plugged in, I could really only plug in +1 device+!

So, to fully power all available plugs on a 4 port hub, you'd need at least a 2 to 2.2amp PS for it.

Now, getting back to reality, you almost never will have a situation where you actually need to provide full available power to all the devices plugged into a hub.

If you want to connect an LEDWIZ and drive more than just a few LEDs (and who doesn't)  :)  you'll likely want to provide a seperate power supply for it. The LEDWiz docs show you how.


As far as the speed, I'm not completely sure on that. USB3  I +know+ is totally unnecessary for input devices. usb2 is what I pretty much always use.

USB 1 would +probably+ work, but you might get some input lag. Someone else on here might know more concretely about that.
Mysterioii:
Actually I'm 41 too, brother.  I've got my MENG in EE but it was old-school stuff even at the time, started out writing automated test programs for circuit cards from naval weapons systems.  I've been out of the EE side for a while doing "legacy system" software support...  man I just can't seem to shake the old stuff...   ;D   I'd actually RATHER be doing new stuff but I seem to have pigeonholed myself, would have to pretty much walk away and start something new if I wanted to change up what I'm doing, and I don't know if anyplace in my area would pay me what I'm making here.

Would love to be truly self-employed if I could find something that I enjoyed doing and that I felt would pay the bills comfortably with enough left over to save up some.  Hell I'd build control panels for people if I didn't think that market was already saturated....   :lol
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