My laptop has one USB 1.1 port. If I purchased a USB 2.0 hub, would that make the laptop itself USB 2.0 or will the connected USB devices run at the slower USB 1.1 speed?
Logically, it would (unfortunately) run at the slower speed. I think of the analogy ''thick water pipe hooked up to a thin one''. The flow of water from thick to thin can only be as high as the thin one allows. But I'm not sure since this is about computers.
usb 2 is a chipset on the i-o card. So the usb 2 hub would automatically fall back to usb 1. You have to get a pc card that has usb 2 on it. They might make those.
Yes, you would need a PCMCIA card that provides USB 2 connections. Then you can connect your USB 2 hub and it will run at the faster speeds. Here are some products I found, but I haven't used them...
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Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge and Sound Forge 6, SONAR, SONAR 2, SONAR 3, SONAR 4, and Sound Forge 8 Power! books. ** Sonar 5 Power The Comprehensive Guide - Now Available! ** Books up to 37% off at: http://www.garrigus.com/
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Although very useful-looking, some of those cards are oversized (because of the number of inputs in them). But my laptop has 2 adjacent slots. How would I be able to use a second cardbus when the need for a second one arises?
Scott, you wrote that I can use a USB 2.0 hub in conjunction with a USB 2.0 PCMCIA. Wouldn't that slow the audio transfer down because of the additional (''extra'') USB connection?
I don't think the hub is going to be a problem, but if you have other stuff hooked up to it, it's going to share the bandwidth if they are all running at the same time, but the bandwidth is routed effectively, that's why the hub is rated at usb 2.
As for the two card slots, they are designed so that the cards can fit in at the same time. The connectors at the end of the card are set up that they face away from the other card that would go in the slot. The designs are universal.
Just buy the one that I suggested and you've be quite happy as I'm sure you'll find you'll need firewire at some point too. If you need more usb 2 connections, you have a hub you can use. If you are absolutely certain you'll never use firewire, and you'll probably find out you will, then you can go for a pure usb 2 card as scott suggested. I'm not sure if the additional slots are merely linked in a hub anyhow and there is really no difference to an external hub or if you get two separate i-o channels. Scott might know maybe, I sure don't. It might say in the card details if you take a look at the card product specs. This is probably being anal about all this as you probably have one device to hook up that's going to be usb 2? What exactly do you forsee needing to hook up beyond the one thing?
The audio card I'll be using to record music on the laptop can be seen at this link:
http://www.presonus.com/inspire1394photos.html
It is a FireWire soundcard. But like I posted before, I know I will need USB 2.0 sooner or later because the laptop has only one USB port (USB 1.1) and it's already being used by a Logitech wireless mouse.
As for the oversized cardbus, I am not sure I understand what you said about it. I am sorry.
The two slots are so adjacent to each other, and just from looking at the picture of the cardbus you suggested, I don't know how two similar cardbuses would fit in the two slots at the same time.
This link shows where the slots are located and how close they are to each other (roll mouse on 2nd picture):
..and now that FireWire is mentioned, another question has risen:
Why is it that FireWire audio cards are more popular than USB 2.0 ones? USB 2.0 is 20% faster than FireWire.
To be perfectly honest, I bought the FireWire soundcard (link above) because I noticed that most users choose to use FireWire according to readings I did online. Moving with the wind, I guess:-)
I don't know if there will be enough room for two cards, but just be sure the store has a return policy so you can test the product and return it if it doesn't work.
I haven't done a lot of research on this, so I could be wrong, but I believe FireWire provides better uninterupted timing when transferring data because it was originally designed for video applications. That may be why it's more popular among product developers.
Scott
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Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge and Sound Forge 6, SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4 and Sound Forge 8 Power! books. ** Sonar 5 Power The Comprehensive Guide - Now Available! ** Books up to 37% off at: http://www.garrigus.com/
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Gene, there is no problem with having two cards in the laptop at once. If you take a look at the picture of the card, it is perfectly flat on one side, you could call that the down side. When you put in two cards, the down side of each card faces each other, so the upsides of the two cards face away from each other. This allows for two cards to fit without problem.
usb 2 lagged firewire and so the companies made firewire products first. The mac had firewire and mac was what a lot of music folks owned. The pc market was secondary for high end music and you could get a firewire card if you needed it. It's all changed now. So usb 2 has caught up. The drivers work well. The protocol differences between firewire and usb 2 are involved. It's more than just speed and bandwidth. It's how the data packets are handled. Firewire might be better for video. I like usb 2 for audio just because my friends all have that already on their computers and might not have firewire.
The firewire specs had been out for along time and so making drivers was easier than for usb 2. It took a while to work out the usb 2 driver situation. There used to be timing concerns with usb midi interfaces, but that is a different issue than with the handling of audio. That's been solved too by now I'm pretty sure. Now there is firewire 800, so maybe we might see usb 3 soon?
'When you put in two cards, the down side of each card faces each other, so the upsides of the two cards face away from each other. This allows for two cards to fit without problem. '
Are you SURE about that? Every PCMCIA/Cardbus card I've ever seen or used is keyed on the insertion end and CAN NOT be arbitrarily flipped over as you suggest. I've seen a few that have reversable/removable heads, but not many.
That would certainly be handy, but it doesn't work that way in any of my notebooks.
Mine is set up so that the flat ends face each other. Look at the picture of the card I recommended. It lies flat on the down side. When I put in two cards, the flat sides face each other and the protruding upsides face away from each other. That's how you get two card at once. It would make no sense to design them so that the flat side on one card faced the non-flat side on the other card. They wouldn't fit at all that way. The cards are designed so they can only go in one way and that is a way where the flat sides face each other. Maybe I'm all wrong about this. I rarely have two cards in at once. I have an echo indigo card that lives in one of the slots. The other I toss in a wireless networking g card. I've also got an adaptec firewire card. They all have the upsides facing away from each other. Otherwise there would be no way they could both go in and having two slots would be pointless.
I'm familiar with that style of card, as well as many others. Most of the USB/Firewire/Combo cards are similar, as are the audio interfaces and many communications cards.
I guess my point is, it isn't a universal solution. It MIGHT work on some notebooks, but certainly not all. I have two different Dells and an IBM and they all work the same. No way to run the cards back to back, as you suggest. One of the Dells is over a year old, and the other machines are even older.
There are lots of reasons to have two slots, including providing the ability to run Type III cards. Lots of cards (other than USB/Firewire) don't have the large heads, or utilize a 'dongle' (really a misused term here, but it gets misused that way a lot) so they work fine in combination. I can use most wireless adapters (slim antenna) with a USB adapter, or a serial port adapter, but I couldn't use two USB cards like you suggest without damaging them. I checked several of the notebooks at work too, (a couple of Toshibas and another Dell) and they are all also keyed so the cards must both be inserted 'label up.' The lower slot is also too close to the bottom to allow a card to be used upside down without putting undue pressure on it.
What kind of notebook do you have? The back to back configuration makes a lot of sense, I just haven't seen it on any of the machines I have access to. Most of them are at least a year old, though.
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