[NBLUG/talk] Intermittent USB controller failure

[Mitch Patenaude]

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.

   -- Mitch


On Jan 29, 2005, at 4:59 PM, Lincoln Peters wrote:

> I have an Asus A78X-X motherboars with onboard USB 2.0.  It works
> perfectly almost all of the time, but on rare occasions, the USB
> controller fails completely, causing the USB devices to shut down and
> any programs that are actively using them to hang.  The only way to 
> make
> them usable again is to reboot the computer (I've tried unloading and
> reloading the relevant modules, but reloading them only seems to cause
> insmod/modprobe to hang).
>
> Has anyone ever encountered a problem like this?  I'm not sure if it's
> caused by the kernel (the stock 2.6.8-1 from Debian/testing), the USB
> controller, or a weird interaction between the two, and I have no idea
> how I'd even find out.