HiJackZX1

lol, i thought all was fine till I saw a bright flash of light, followed by a big ball of smoke and flames....., just maybe a accidently switched the polarity..... Im going to go ahead and try the 5v rail again, this time i kept the receipt, so if it fries, Im taking it back.

If this does work.... can I have more then one hub on a 5v rail? I want to power 2 hubs and a USB DVD rom.

Also, this is a main concern..... Since I am connecting this to my USB, will I have to worry about anything else dying if something goes wrong. I mean the 5v rail from the power supply will now lead into the USB be ports.... If there is a overload wont it take the data port and power port of the motherboard?

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Disefyl

Multiple devices should not be an issue as long as the capacity of the psu is not exceeded.


Ive often wondered the same thing myself. Im not familiar enough with the design of USB hubs to say one way or another; although, I would imagine there exists some element of its design to prevent this.

HiJackZX1

I dont think I will surpass the PSU capacity, its 320 watts!!!!!!!!! Ive been doing even more research, I found this http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...entPage=search, I was thinking of simply cutting off the black USB data plug and simply use the RED USB plug. My idea is to cut the the red plug, and splice the red and ground to the red and ground of the PSU.... basically use this hub as an power distribution area. What im wondering is will it provide the power if the data end is not connected..... guess the only thing to do is try....... If this works, I will be so happy.......... then I can finally move onto the next stage.... as of this moment I cant even use the PC the way I want to.

2k1Toaster

320W means absolutely nothing.

If it is 300W on the 12v rail and 20W on the 5v rail, then with a cpu and all, you will barely have any for the hub. Likewise if it is 20W on the 12v, and 300W on the 5v, then your cpu wouldnt power up. So total wattage means nothing. And to top that off, there is efficiency. DC-DC are better, but you wont get 100% of the advertised values. Just like a $10 600W desktop PSU will usually spit out less power than a $100 300W PSU.

To make it catch fire, you either connected it to the 12v (yellow/black) by mistake, or reversed the polarity. If you overloaded the PSU, the PSU would burst into flames, not the USB hub. You overloaded the USB hub from one of those 2 ways. The third could be of course sloppy soldering and you tied together the lines creating a nice fire ball but that would be pretty stupid and I doubt anybody is that careless.

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HiJackZX1

I think I read somewhere, that it is all about the amprage.... I think maybe it was the polarity, even though I checked it several times. Shame on Belkin for not color coding thier wires..... Thank fully the USB Octapus hub does color code. The way I connect everything to the 5v and 12v rails is by using those little caps that you screw on... I hate the electrical tape, because if I have to change something out and add too.

Toaster this question is for you. I bought a Octapus USB hub, basically a hub were the ports branch out. On one end there was the 4 ports and on the other, the one that connects to the USB port on the board, but it also came with a y-adapter to connect another plug into a onboard port to power it. I cut the ends off both of those and connected red to red and black to black. The cables will then go to the black and red on the PSU. Because this is a HUB, will it try to limit power in anyway when it comes to the ports. The soul purpose of this HUB is to distribute power, no data at all.... Its to power the 3 devices that need outside power (2 hubs and dvd rom). Should I simply cut the HUB off and use the ports and connect them directly to the PSU? Reason I ask this is because I think some hubs will not turn on if there is no data transmission, is this accurate?

2k1Toaster

Yes it is about the amperage. 300W is meaningless, but 10A@12v, 5A@5v, and so on is helpful.

Nobody colour codes really because it is cheaper to use the same colour wire when manufacturing. They dont expect the end user to mess with it. But it should be a little barrel plug right? Then what you do is look on the power transformer and there is a little circle with a full dot with lines connecting them. One will say +5v. Then you know if it is the centre plug, or the barrel part. Strip the wires, and check the resistance between wire A and the centre. If it is infinate/O.L. then wrong wire. If it is 0ohms, then correct wire. Not too hard, just have to be careful.


You are trying to use the hub as a power switch? Can't do that. USB says 100mA on startup, then the device can request more and send 500mA. I am not really sure what you are doing...

Each device will have either a barrel plug, or a spare usb plug to give it the extra power. If it is a barrel plug (best way, try to shop for things with it to make life easy), just chop off the ac/dc brick check polarity like above and solder to a molex (4pin like a HD or floppy uses) making sure to use the red/black (5v/0v) wires. Connect it to the PSU, and done. If it is a USB port, then all it wants is power. So chop off the end, look for the red and black (usually, but if cheap/chinese then confirm with known dc source and multimeter) wires and again direct connect to the molex and PSU. voila, done.

I think you are trying to make this much more difficult than it truly is.

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Curiosity

Yes, you are making things much too difficult and wasting money. Since you've already chopped up the hub you should cut off one female USB plug to power the CDROM and connect it to that molex. That way you don't have to chop up the CDROM cable.

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XPort 1.26 -GPS port splitter, logger, and USB device resume fix

HiJackZX1

Thanx for all the help guys. What I did was buy this thing called an octapus hub, because the ports hang away from the hub. I then cut the tenicles off, spliced the red and black together, cut off green and white cables (data), So now I have 4 ports that only supply power. I guess when I connected the belkin hubs, I messed up the polarity, I hooked up the Targus hubs, connected the red (power) USB, to the new power ports and then connected the data to the onboard usb port..... everything is now powered and working great. I still have not installed the DVD rom though, The USB cable, I will not touch at all.... instead one of the Octopus arms goes to the back of it, and I have this little USB cable that plugs into it and on the other end is a adapter plug that simply plugs into the back of the ROM. Havent had a chance to test yet.... will keep you updated!

nasa

Hi,

In my attempts to follow these instructions:

"Yes, cut the power wires in roughly half - so you can reconnect the brick if possible. You'll need to figure out which lead needs to be positive and which one needs to be ground, but you can do that with it plugged in and test the tip and the shield of the lead. There's also a symbol that indicates if the lead is positive tip or negative tip, but I've always found it simplete to just test it with a multimeter. Then figure out which wire corresponds to the tip and wire everything appropriately." (from post #4 of this thread)

I discovered my brick has a white and black wire (well sort of...) The cable running to the plug has the white wire (in a sheath) surrounded by the threads from the black wire. I am guessing the black wire is ground and the white is power.... Is that right?

Nasa

Curiosity

In my opinion you have 2 options.

1. Get a meter and be assured you're safely connecting it correctly.

2. Hook it up, cross your fingers and hope it doesn't smoke. You've got a 50/50 chance it'll be right.

__________________
XPort 1.26 -GPS port splitter, logger, and USB device resume fix

chanh55

Thanks to the info in this thread I powered my hub via splicing the AC adaptor and soldering the barrell to a molex connector. Anyways it works fine if I plug in the hub after powering up my board but it wont power up if I have it plugged in before.

I'm guessing the PSU doesn't have enough amps to power everything at start up. Will this fix my problem?

http://store.mp3car.com/ProductDetai...Code=PWR%2D022

Thanks in advance.

HiJackZX1

No, its not the PSU, but the motherboard....... I had the same issue.... the board will turn on then immediately turn off..... I have this issue when I try to power the hub that is plugged into the onboard USB. When I use the power plugs on the hubs that are connected to the PCI USB card, i do not have the shut off issue......

chanh55

Hmmm... I'm powering my hub via 5V molex. I actually tried a PCI USB card and my board wouldn't turn on with it installed. So you think the problem is caused by the hub drawing too much power from the onboard USB port?

HiJackZX1

It could be a feature built into the PCI card, just like my motherboard has the feature, but the pci card does not..... there must be an option to turn it off.... You could also be right, maybe the start up voltage isnt enough? I know on my Opus i can set up the volts it uses to turn on and off.

chanh55

You think I should change that little red switch on the PSU to a higher voltage? I never messed with that thing I hope it doesn't mess something up.

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