Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with USB

Looking for an affordable USB amplifier.

primer_dimer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:13:04 -0800

Looking for an affordable ($100) USB amplifier. I've switched over to digital for all my music; currently I use an external sound card (I think it's a "Xitel hi-fi link") to a phono input on my amp, which drives a pair of reasonable bookshelf speakers. I'm pretty happy with the sound quality, but the amp is on its last legs and I'd like to replace it.

I assumed that by now it would be possible to buy an amplifier with a USB input which could drive my speakers (i.e. doing the job of both the USB soundcard and amp). Just a box with USB input, speaker cable output and a volume knob. Or even without a volume knob!

But all I can find are audiophile products like this. Anyone know of a cheaper (£70/$100) version of this? Or is the market at this price point served by USB speakers?

Recommend a USB scanner for Linux

phliar — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:56:10 -0800

Which current USB flatbed scanner works under Linux? My trusty old SCSI Umax scanner is on its deathbed, and I'd like to also retire its SCSI PC (I only use it for the scanner), and get a USB scanner.

Alas! it seems like none of the USB scanners currently available on Amazon and NewEgg are on the SANE supported list. I've started looking for used scanners but I'd rather buy a new one if possible. Anyone here have any experience getting any currently available USB flatbed scanners to work under Linux?

(I don't need to scan photos, just documents. Scan quality is not that important, but reliability is.)

TOSLINK USB surround sound adapter + Mac OS X?

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:57:24 -0800

What is a good, working surround sound USB adapter for a Mac mini in a home theatre setup, which uses a TOSLINK connector? (I would be using this with DVD Player, iTunes, VLC, QuickTime Player, etc. if that matters for software support.)

MouseTrapped! How can I make my mouse load faster in Win 7?

newfers — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:12:13 -0800

Why is my USB mouse the last item to load when Windows 7 is finished booting up? Sometimes I have to wait while it recognizes external USB drives, and in the meantime, I have no control over my mouse. Is there a way to change the order which my USB devices load? I suppose I could just haphazardly unplug and re-plug my USB devices to see if it changes the load order, but I suspect there must be a software solution to give my mouse priority over all my other USB devices. You would think it wouldn't make much of a difference, but it does. It makes me feel like my system has crashed for that 30 seconds or so when I see my desktop but have no mouse control.

is there a "smart" way to get my computer to shut down after my ipod is charged?

pennstatephil — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:49:05 -0800

is there software or a trick to shut down my computer after an ipod finishes charging? Recently moved to an iTouch, and the old wall charging brick (firewire adapter) won't work with it, so I've got to use my computer. I'd love some sort of tool that would auto-shut down the computer when the battery was charged. Is there such a tool, or (I'm a programmer) is there some way to interface with itunes' battery status meter to run something when the ipod is fully charged? I know there are plenty of programs that can shut down at a certain time, but I'd rather something a bit "smarter."

iPhone can has be USB drive?

ShadePlant — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:11:07 -0800

Which app is best for dragging and dropping Word/PDF files from my laptop to get them on my iPhone so I can email them to my office? The caveat: I don't have internet at home anymore and sometimes I need to edit a document I was working on (at home) at work or school. My office uses WYSE terminals which won't read a USB drive. I've found emailing myself stuff to be the best way to schlep files around. I have an early version of Mac OS X at home and my iPhone is a 3G.

Wireless router that can connect to a printer and external hard drive?

Dasein — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:23:12 -0800

Please help me find a router to make my parents' lives easier. I am looking for a wireless router that will allow me to connect to a printer and an external hard drive via USB. It doesn’t need to be wireless N (G is fine), but if it’s N it needs to be dual-band. Other than the Apple Airport Extreme with a USB hub attached, what wireless routers can do this? The models from Linksys with Storage Link and D-Link with Shareport seem to be able to connect to either a printer or a USB drive, but not both simultaneously. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'd like my parents to be able to wirelessly print and back up data to a RAID drive. They run Windows, and while I'll install Bonjour to run the Airport Extreme if necessary, I know they will be a little suspicious about the comptability of Apple products. If the Airport Extreme is the only way to do this, anything you could say that would allow me to reassure them that printing will be seamless with Bonjour would also be appreciated.

A million tiny pieces, on a USB drive.

tmcw — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:52:17 -0800

Transferring lots of files quickly to USB sticks? So, I'm trying to transfer map tilesets to USB drives ('sticks') - which means 1-12 gigs of data, but organized in files which are all less than 1MB. Transferring this with cp to a USB drive would probably take a week, so I've been trying to create images of the directory on my machine and then basically 'burning' the USB drive, with little success, since it appears that the Apple tools for this (hdiutil and asr) are either junk or too Apple-specific to deal with FAT32 - asr definitely can't.

So, how do people do this? I assume that they do, right? Ideas? Thanks

Dual-Bay SATA Enclosures

sdis — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:05:09 -0800

Dual-bay SATA Enclosures! Which ones let me copy from one drive to the other on a Mac? I have my eye out on this inexpensive one, and in the end, I want a box into which I can stuff two harddrives, copy stuff between them, and copy stuff between my internal laptop harddrive and them. Bonus points if I can hook it up via USB to my Airport Extreme and get two network drives.

Will this EagleTech one do what I need? If not, what will?

(Having trouble finding detailed info on this enclosure, although from various reviews, it appears that it supports RAID 0 as well as "normal", though I'm not clear what "normal" would be in this circumstance)

External USB drive, Linux machine, POST/mount woes!

xmutex — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:11:39 -0800

Please hope me: my Linux machine cannot boot when my external drive is connected: it can't get past POST tests when USB legacy is enabled, but it also can't mount the drive when USB legacy is _not_ enabled. :( So if USB legacy is enabled and external drive is connected, the machine sits at pre-POST testing forever. It won't get past it. If USB legacy is turned off, it boots, but Linux (ubuntu 9) cannot mount the drive. So what I have to do is keep USB legacy off, and when the machine boots, unplug/replug the drive- then run mount manually.

This situation sucks cos the external drive is my backup. I don't want the machine to boot w/o it connected, and don't want to have to manually intervene.

Is this more an issue w/ the machine, or the drive? It's a Buffalo 1TB external USB drive - this dude.

Any tips? Thanks!

Stupid Keyboard Question

misanthropicsarah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:49:19 -0800

Got a new computer and it only has USB hookups, no ps2 hookups for a keyboard or mouse. No problem, I already had a USB mouse and it came with a USB keyboard (whatever generic one Dell ships). But I really liked my old keyboard which had a ps2 connector. So, I got a couple of ps2/usb adaptors figuring that would solve my problem. It didn't. The computer didn't recognize the keyboard when it was plugged in. Why? Since I'd bought two adaptors (buy one get one free) I tried both figuring one might be dead, but neither worked.

At this point I had just unplugged the USB keyboard and plugged in the ps2-with-adaptor keyboard, so thinking that might be the issue, I turned the machine off then turned it back on with the ps2-with-adaptor keyboard plugged in. As the machine was booting an error message came up about a keyboard error (no keyboard recognized?).

I gave up and plugged the USB keyboard back in and have been using that and sulking. Do I need to buy some kind of fancier ps2/usb adaptor? Install a driver or something (the keyboard I want to use is the 5 years ago version of whatever Dell was shipping, but I really like it!)? Resign myself to this ridiculous keyboard?

I realize that this is a stupid question, but this keyboard has been bothering me for a couple of weeks and I have not gotten used to it as I thought I would. Forgive me my absurdness.

usb mix copying help

anya32 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:54:35 -0800

how do i save a mix of songs on a usb stick in order? i'm trying to give someone a mix on a usb stick and when i copy over the songs, they are not in the order i want them to be.

thanks so much!

Painted into a corner, I fear

flabdablet — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:30:54 -0800

Did I just brick this computer? This hand-me-down K7T266 based PC had previously been diagnosed with a faulty PS/2 keyboard port, and the owner had been advised that this was not worth fixing and that he should just use a USB keyboard, which he was doing. Windows XP Home ran just fine this way. However, there was no obvious way to get to the BIOS settings as the BIOS didn't recognize the USB keyboard, and thus no obvious way to boot from CD.

No problem, says me cheerfully; we'll just reset the CMOS settings, which should make it enable legacy USB keyboard support from powerup, and let us get to the BIOS settings screen using your USB keyboard. So I do the usual jumper dance.

Bad move. On startup, it now announces that that the CMOS settings are wrong (fair enough) and prompts to press F1 to enter Setup or F2 to load defaults and continue - but it still won't accept USB keyboard input, so it just sits there. It never gets as far as trying to boot, either from disk or anything else.

We tried plugging in a PS/2 keyboard but that does, indeed, not work. We also tried plugging the USB keyboard into one of the mobo USB ports after I noticed that it was attached to a PCI add-on card; no change. The owner says that he seems to recall being told that the mobo USB ports were faulty as well, which is why the add-on card was installed. Sigh.

So it seems my helpfully helpful help has cost him the use of his old computer. Anybody got any good ideas for getting it going again, or have I just obligated myself to find, supply and fit a replacement K7T266 mobo?

Trying to get old files from older HDD

Student of Man — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:56:49 -0800

I'm trying to get my old files off of an old Hard-disk. Old PC is XP newer PC is Vista. I removed the Hardisk from the OLD computer. I bought a USB to SATA/IDE cable. When I plug in the Hard-disk via USB, I hear the confirmation tone that you hear everytime you plug in a USB. I see a "ST340082 0AS SCSI Disk Device" in the "Safely remove hardware" icon in the tray. but I do not see the Drive. I can't really afford an External Hard drive. But I will eventually if I have to. Cna anyone help me please.

How to speed up a file transfer between two external hard drives?

matkline — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:11:13 -0800

Why is it that when I transfer files from an external hard drive to my laptop's hard drive via USB 2.0, the speeds are so much faster than transferring files from one external hard drive to another (5 mins vs. a few hours for 1.5 GB)? I think it might have to do with the fact that the external drives use different file systems (NTFS vs. FAT32). Is there any software that could speed things up?

Are there any hard drive enclosures for 3.5" form HDs that can be powered off a USB port alone?

chefscotticus — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:30:29 -0800

Are there any hard drive enclosures for 3.5" form HDs that can be powered off a USB port alone? (ie, without additional AC plug) I'm looking for a HD enclosure to use with a Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Hard Drive (WD15EADS) that wouldn't require me to plug an AC adapter into the wall. WD claims this drive uses 40% less power -- not sure if that matters.

It will be primarily connected to a MacBook (5.1) that has 2 USB 2.0 ports, but no FireWire.

Potentially faulty MP3 player

Inner Universe — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:37:04 -0800

Can my usb-using MP3 player be saved? I own a Creative MuVo V100 MP3 player, and have had it for roughly two years or so. It has seen some wear and tear over the years but has none the less served me well.

However, or the last two months or so I haven't been able to upload music on to it. Whenever I insert the device into the USB port of a computer it will recognise the device but come up with a hardware failure notice. This happened with all the computers I've tried, not just my own, so I'm certain the fault lies with the MP3 player itself. The only unusual thing is that the device will sometimes connect correctly but generally it doesn't (roughly 90-95% of the time it won't).

Is there anything I can do to salvage my MP3 player? I admit I could do with upgrading to a better model mainly for the bigger memory, but that won't be happening in the foreseeable future. If any further information is required to help diagnose/fix the problem, I'll do my best to provide it.

emergency boot disk for laptop

Wong Fei-hung — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:19:46 -0800

Any suggestions on an emergency boot tool that can see my hard drive? My laptop won't boot all the way. Right when I should see three account icons I get an spinning circle and a "please wait" message. Circle and message eventually go away and I am stuck. Toshiba Satellite with Vista Home Premium 32 bit. I have tried booting from Knoppix CD (on USB) and Windows X-PE (on CD) but neither can see my hard drive. Laptop is just over a year old.

Thanks! (The Recovery Disks that Toshiba supplied with my computer are not compatible with it.)

How can you make XP Pro to run USB ports at 2.0 speed?

yggdrasil — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:23:58 -0800

Why are my netbook's USB 2.0 ports running at 1.1 speed under XP Pro, and what can I do to fix this? I have an Asus EEE 1000HA netbook that originally came with XP Home. I installed XP Pro, including complete patches, upgrades, updates, and current service packs, and have been happily computing for almost a year.

I recently noticed that whenever I plug in a USB device (be it external hard drive, disk drive, TV receiver stick, or flash drive), XP pops up a warning that the device could run faster if I'd only use the right 2.0 port. Problem: all three USB ports purport to be 2.0, but none of them are. Now that I think back, I think it has done this since the beginning, so it's not a recent development.

I'm running completely updated XP Pro and a current version of the BIOS (and no, the standard fix to turn "OS installation" in the BIOS to "complete" is not an option in this BIOS version). I've tried uninstalling all the USB devices and let Windows discover and install them, but they're still 1.1. But I know that the hardware is 2.0 compatible because both on-board camera and flash reader work - camera doesn't work at 1.1, and the flash reader runs at 2.0 speed (or at least a hell of a lot faster than the USB stick). [It's not a difference in media: same microSD card in USB stick is hella-slow, but stick it into the flash reader inside the SD adapter, and it's full speed ahead). So the 2.0 USB hardware is on-board.

I've spent more than an hour with ASUS tech support, and they say that they don't have a patch, and that it's actually a known issue with XP, and to try calling MS. I'm abroad for the next 3 months, so I really don't want to have to pay international long distance to be parked in on-hold-telephone-tree-hell at MS.

So does anyone have a work around or patch? (I can't install a linux distribution because I need to be able to run my law school's exam software... otherwise, I'd be all about it...)

I Ch-Ch-Charge you

gensubuser — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:10:49 -0800

Where would you go to get a cheap iPhone/iPod wall charger and/or USB cable? From looking at amazon and a couple other vendors, it seems there is a very popular tactic of ramping down the product quality in successive batches. By the time an item has 4star reviews, the next shipment could very well fry your device. I have a 2G Touch.

Can you recommend a vendor that either: A) has a large inventory in stock of the same device, such that I can rely on the reviews, or B) is semi-branded such that their reputation matters?

Or, some other tactic.

3G USB for US and Australia?

obiwanwasabi — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:05:54 -0800

Which 3G USB key/stick thingy should my Mom buy if she wants to be able to use it in Australia and the US? She'll probably want a prepaid solution in both countries rather than a plan.

ableton, wifi and low latency

Moistener — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:42:40 -0800

If you're able to run Ableton with very low ASIO latency AND have a USB wifi dongle AND can run both simultaneously AND run Windows XP, please tell me what wifi dongle you have. Wifi dongles and their drivers have a known habit of locking up, blocking up and cocking up the smooth flow of data required for low latency ASIO Ableton awesomeness.

My Zydas/Linkskey USB dongle is such a one.

I'd like to buy a different wifi USB dongle so I can stream Ableton awesomeness via wifi.

Do you have a USB serial port that works on Windows 7?

0xFCAF — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:33:14 -0800

What USB serial port works on (32-bit) Windows 7? My motherboard doesn't have a back-panel serial port, but I have a serial device I need to use. I had a no-name (literally zero brand markings on it) USB serial port from Fry's, but it didn't come with any drivers and Win7 doesn't automatically figure it out like XP did. Do you have one of these and have it working in Windows 7?

Alternatively, if you know where I can get a serial port bracket for an ASUS M3A78-EM, that'd do the job as well. Cursory research shows there are two different pin-outs and I haven't been able to figure out a) which this motherboard uses and b) what any given one for sale uses. The manual unhelpfully just says it's "sold separately".

Turn an AT&T laptop connect card into a wi-fi hotspot?

mickmel — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:14:42 -0800

About six months ago, I saw a cool device. You could plug your AT&T USB 3G "laptop connect" into it, and it would generate a local wi-fi hotspot (similar to the Verizon MiFi). I've since purchased the AT&T card, but I can't find the device anywhere. Was I imagining things? Does such a device exist? It'd be very, very useful. Thanks!

My Maxtor drive (Seagate disk??) won't mount. Where should I send it?

skylar — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:05:20 -0800

My Maxtor Basics 1 terabyte external USB 2.0 drive no longer mounts. I have been through all the usual stuff with tech support (including disk management and device management) and I've tried it on multiple computers. Although the green light comes on when it's plugged into USB, apart from that it's not talking to the computer. There has been no strange noise, clicking, smoke or smell. Maxtor tech support say it's a failed drive. A data recovery company I phoned said it's probably damaged firmware but the data on the disk is probably safe. I'm nervous about sending it to a data recovery company because I seem to be looking at about GBP £179 minimum or maybe many, many hundreds more. Is it likely to be a matter of simply soldering something here or replacing something there, ie a job that I could take to a local geek? Or should I be looking to take this to a major data recovery centre? I'm in London, UK.