Is this an almost powered hub.

[Default] On Fri, 1 Jul 2016 00:35:51 -0600, in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:
Micky wrote:
I just got a USB hub, a cheap one that I haven't had reason to use
yet, with 7 outputs, each with a switch and a light.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's $5.23 now but I paid 3.19.

And it has a little hole on the end with a little pin in the hole that
doesn't look shiny or like it's metal. The only tip I have that
fits has a light red tip on the tip's tip.

So I don't have an easy way to test and I thought you experienced guys
might know if this means, even though the ad made no reference to it,
that if I find a 5.3v power supply, I'll have a powered hub? If I
ever need one.

I have a general question he How are you supposed to tell if these
are
"intelligent" hubs with some electronics inside, or simply a bunch of
parallel connected USB connectors (which wouldn't be of any use except
to power some low current device)?

If there really is any electronics inside (for servicing the ports as a
real
hub should), I don't know how they can do it for $5.00.

Each port will receive a private D+ and D-.

I see. I suppose, then, there is some inexpensive ASIC inside, dedicated to
just that task.

If one port was "shared" with mechanical switches,
over seven connectors, it wouldn't be a seven port
device, because it could not run seven devices
simultaneously.

You could build a "seven port charging bar"
with that sort of perverse thinking, but if you want
data communications you have to shell out a little
bit more for chips.

Do they even make such a thing (multiport charging bar)?

And they could do it for $5.00 ... if the materials
were acquired in a distress sale. If a small company
making hubs went bankrupt, the remaining finished goods
inventory might have been sold for pennies on the dollar.

Paul

So it sounds like that's what they did. To me it's still pretty amazing
for $5.00. I wonder if it's just one customized IC (ASIC) inside that does
it all.

I only paid $3.19. Amazon prices go up and down, several times a
day on some things, often a lot. I don't suppose that changes what
they pay their vendor, but maybe it does. The vendors might agree
to rely on Amazon's price algorithm.

[Default] On Fri, 01 Jul 2016 08:20:22 -0400, in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general Paul wrote:

For its intended purpose, the little $5 hub
will be fine. Like, as a means to plug in
a bunch of USB flash keys or something. But

Exactly. I was using up my 4 front ports on the computer with little
things that could go into this "extension cord". Now it's plugged
into the front, but later I'll plug it into the back, and save one
more port in front.

Now I'm wasting a whole port for my Bluetooth thing, for one thing,
because it's semicircular and hard to pull out. I rarely use it, and
it doesn't use much power. If it's USB1, maybe I'll be able to tell.
Mostly it will be for uploading photographs from the phone.

And the camera I almost never use (but you can't make a skype camera
call unless you have a camera. Even if the other party has one. )

Also one of the three usb ports on the net book is not working well,
and I use one for the mouse and one for a keyboard, so then I have no
jack for a flashdrive. (Oops, I have a hub for the netbook.)

And it was only $3.15 less than a month ago.

I've always figured that cheap quartz watches used the slivers of
quartz that originally came from the same batch as for good watches,
but they were the ones that didn't keep good time.

[Default] On Fri, 01 Jul 2016 11:07:43 -0400, in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2016 08:20:22 -0400, Paul wrote:




You *can* find some weird USB extension cords,
and you can use something other than USB protocol
for remoting a USB signal. But I don't have any
handy rule of thumb for exactly how far you
could go that way. I'm just happy with my
bog-standard 15 foot extension cables and
the hub limit. I haven't tried to go "down the
street" with the stuff.


I have some of the 3 meter extensions and you can daisy chain them. I
also have a few 20 meter cords and it will not run my printer reliably
but it does work for a mouse/kbd

I have 2 15' and 1 ~40 foot, or something like that, and last summer I
tested and the camera worked at 40 feet. I may have mentioned last
summer that the goal was to put the camera on a long pole and see what
was clogging my gutter. But the camera was spherical, and I
couldn't manage to keep it in place. The house is 2 stories plus 30
inches of basement showing, about 19 feet.

I cleaned the front gutter with a water squirter on a long pipe
(standing on a ladder), but the rear gutter still overflows.

I bought another camera for $3 at a job lot type store (Ollies),
rectangular with a clip, no less, meant to go on the top edge of a
laptop. but I don't seem to care so much about the gutter this
summer.

For its intended purpose, the little $5 hub
will be fine. Like, as a means to plug in
a bunch of USB flash keys or something. But
knowing just how cheap some outfits can be,
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that
the hub chips are USB1.1 and were "clearance
items" at some chip factory.

The 7 port I have (branded "Ports") is 2.0 but I imagine that is the
clearance chip now.

Mine is branded PORTS. It's probably better than yours and that's why
they use caps.

Micky wrote:


Even in the US, once it's designed and set up, the marginal cost of a
chip is only pennies.

Well, let's pretend a 12" wafer costs $10,000 to make.
Now, if you saw up that wafer, how many of your
mythical chips fit into it ? That will determine the
rock-bottom pricing possible.

If you could saw up 10,000 tiny chips, the material
cost would be $1.00 each. If you could get 40,000 die
out of that, allowing some room for the sawing process,
your raw material would now be $0.25.

The silicon has to be packaged. At one time, packages
were very expensive, because they were ceramic and
multi-layer (some of the routing was strip line
or microstrip, for things regarded as transmission
lines). There, the silicon might be cheap, and the
ceramic casing might cost $100 (depending on the
number of connections). So for some products,
it did seem "the silicon is free", when compared
to the pricing on the protective outer package.

Now, plastic is popular for packages. And the
seal doesn't have to be hermetic. At one time, the
chips were actually leak-tested to make sure the
environment couldn't get at them.

The very cheapest chip packaging is "glob top". The
company buys bare silicon dies when building things
like car digital clocks. The die is affixed to a printed
circuit board (somehow), the contacts are wire
bonded, and then a dab of some sort of epoxy is placed
over top of the whole thing. You can tell from the
precision of the circle of epoxy over top of that
spot on the PCB, that a machine applies the covering
material. And in that case, you haven't paid for
a chip package at all.

http://www.masterbond.com/sites/defa...s/globtop3.jpg

Another chip packaging technique is MCM or multi chip
module. It's popular to put four separate silicon dies
inside an MCM, and from the outside it looks like any
other chip. (Any where from one to four chips is
considered "practical" and is common-place. For example,
a quad core Q6600 is two chips next to one another,
with cache coherency protocol to make them look like
a real quad core.)

http://www.cpushack.com/wp-content/u...raphC4-MCM.jpg

They have attempted to make much larger MCMs. Some
IBM mainframes, used modules with maybe 100 chips
inside, and a real good cooling solution. But then, that
isn't consumer electronics any more. And the cost
of the package still wouldn't be all that cheap
(when divided over the 100 chips inside). IBM also
perfected a wiring layer scheme in ceramic, that would
allow 600 routing layers. And that could be how those
100 chips get hooked up, via the substrate. A technique
like this, would allow an entire PC and all DRAM, to be
put into one hand-sized package.

http://www.cpu-galaxy.at/Downloads/IBM_MCM_hand.jpg

But for a $0.25 chip, the plastic package cannot
afford to be very expensive.

And for packaging wizardry, the flash memory in your
SSD drive is a leader in the area. Stacked silicon dies
or 3D silicon are popular, and there is a real difference
between what one company can do, and what the others can
do. And the factories for some of that stuff, are
absolutely huge. Tesla huge.

http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/...-mmc-stack.jpg

(This is a three dimensional chip, and a side view of a flash memory)

http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecach...1/Picture5.png

Paul

In message , Paul in Houston TX
writes:
Micky wrote:
I just got a USB hub, a cheap one that I haven't had reason to use
yet, with 7 outputs, each with a switch and a light.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...etailpage_o06_
s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's $5.23 now but I paid 3.19.

And it has a little hole on the end with a little pin in the hole that
doesn't look shiny or like it's metal. The only tip I have that
fits has a light red tip on the tip's tip.

So I don't have an easy way to test and I thought you experienced guys
might know if this means, even though the ad made no reference to it,
that if I find a 5.3v power supply, I'll have a powered hub? If I
ever need one.

You could try it and see.
The worst that can happen is it destroys your computer and peripherals by
back feeding unknown voltage and polarity into them.

(Well, you could try it without it being connected to the computer, just
driving novelty peripherals, such as lamps and fans. That way you'd not
blow up _too_ much if it isn't well.)

One of the Q&As on the Amazon site goes:

Question:
Is as AC Power adapter included? and if not, can we have a link to buy
it?
Answer:
There was an AC adaptor available but didn't come with the unit. I
bought this one off the site at the time:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001PUSERA/...pe_175190_2143
1760_3p_M3T1_ST1_dp_1

(though it doesn't say if he was successful).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

You can believe it if it helps you to sleep. - Quoted by Tom Lehrer (on
religion, in passing), April 2013.