System Locks up overnight

[tylerr]

How about this.

I use unpowered USB hubs in my systems. Is it possible that I could be overloading the USB system with the CIB, Dongle, and USB for the UPS plugged in without auxiliary power?

I still love computers.

Tyler

[samsc]

it is always possible that unpowered usb hubs might get overloaded with power requirements of peripherals.

cib takes quite a lot of power. its close to the usb limit.

but cib disconnection shouldnt cause any freezing unless something else is happening.

do you still love computers?

does your problem move when you change the peripheral from computer to computer?

did you try a different hub?
Or try powering the hub?

[tylerr]

is there some nifty little application out there that will tell me the utilization of the available USB power?

[samsc]

there is the USB Prober application - its in the utilities folder.
this shows what devices think they are consuming.
i dont think there is any active monitoring of current available.

[tylerr]

Now here is something interesting.

In the system profiler if you click on USB it will tell you that there is 500ma available on each buss. Or at least that is how I am interpreting it. Now if you look at your USB Key and CIB you will notice that they both draw 500ma. if that is the case and I am reading all this right it never should have worked with an un-powered USB hub. That would be a 1A load on a 500ma service. It doesn't work in lighting so why did it seem to work in the world of Apple.

Thoughts?

[samsc]

the cib does use almost all the available power.

the usb key will use almost no power.

I would never suggest that the cib were plugged into an unpowered hub-

[tylerr]

well the machines ran for 15 hours last night and no problems. I think the problem is solved.

Tyler

[tylerr]

Little did I know or realize that the USB hub will not maintain the data stream from the CIB. Thus the machine seems to freeze but the mac is operating just fine.

In the end here is what I have determined to be the issues.

1) Use a powered USB hub for your software key and keyboard/mouse.

2) Plug the CIB directly into the MAC.

A USB hub will falter and interrupt the data stream.

I do not use a USB card in the computer because it impends the cooling of the video card and with a SCSI card and a Deck link card in there is not more room.

Oh my I hope this is finally over.

[samsc]

sounds like the cib stopped working with the power available to it...

you might have used a hub which could not supply enough power to the cib.

[tylerr]

Possibly but the CIB screen never went dark. The data just stops flowing.