🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:53:18 -0700 (PDT), sandy58
<aleckie68@googlemail.com> wrote:

>On Jun 15, 6:20 am, BigAl...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I have come across this once or twice and its never really bothered
>> me, but I am curious as to why:
>>
>> Occasionally I fond certain devices wont work on front panel usb
>> headers, yet when plugged into the rear USB connectors that are "hard
>> wired" to the motherboard, they are fine.
>>
>> At the moment, I have two external HDDs (with there own power supply)
>> that wont work on the front but do work on the rear, however various
>> other devices such as mouse and USB thumb drives do work on the front.
>>
>> Why????
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> -Al
>> PS: seen it on both XP and Vista.
>
>I'm with kony on this. I never use a front end usb access for that
>reason. Mostly junk & blow anything shoved in there. :-(


I do use them, with mixed results.  One time I had to finish
up a case and had no USB2 spec round cable at the time (was
an old case I moderized by cutting a square hole to mount a
USB port), and used a ribbon cable.  At the time, USB2
didn't exist yet (except maybe on paper) so the cable was
sufficient for USB1, but later the case innards were
moderized with a board having USB2.  

I never got around to swapping out the ribbon cable with a
rounded one because it's not a primary use system and the
system would need more modifications if it were every
upgraded again due to insufficient airflow and no easy way
to add that (old Gateway case that was double-walled with a
curved plastic exterior, it's just not worth the extra
work).  That front port works fine with USB2 thumbdrives,
but the signal is degraded a lot apparently as performance
is only 60% or so of what the same thumbdrives get
otherwise, and these are not particularly fast drives, the
performance would probably go down more if they were.

Even on a fairly new Coolermaster case with what looks like
a decent quality round cable, benchmarks show about 10%
performance reduction using the front panel ports instead of
rear with a newer USB flash thumbdrive, but this is a small
enough difference that I don't mind so much, as flash drive
performance has practically doubled over the last 2-3 years
and it's not even worth the bother to reach over further to
plug it into a motherboard rear port connected USB hub
unless I've a lot of files to move.

I find scanners and printers to be the more problematic USB
connected devices when it comes to failure to detect and
use, whether it be when the drivers for the device are
initially installed or later when one tries to use the
device and the system can't find it.  This is assuming the
motherboard uses 5V instead of 5VSB for USB port power, if
it doesn't the first thing I try is 5V instead, and
connecting to a hub or other system which often reveals a
poor cable that came with the device can be swapped to make
it work, on most if not all systems and ports but the front
panel case ports still seem to cause problems more often
than the rear ones.  It'll be interesting to see if the
problem gets better (even resolved), worse, or stays similar
when USB3 and supporting products are released.