Usb pci card & digital camera problem

[Jim R]

Hi folks

I have a usb problem. After a thunderstorm & despite having a surge
protector my usb ports on the motherboard died (along with modem & soundcard
which I replaced & are now working ok). As my system is fairly old I bought
a cheap Trust usb 1.0 pci card as a replacement. The card works fine with
my usb mouse and radio but I can't transfer pics from my Fuji Finepix 1400
digital camera. When connected to the camera I get a "device not ready"
error and the system freezes and has to be rebooted.
I notice that the m/b usb shares irq 10 with my pci card. I tried disabling
the original usb ports in the device manager but it makes no difference.
Trust support desk advised me to disable usb ports in BIOS but I can't see
an option to do that in the BIOS setup menus or manual.
The pc specs are: PII 350; Win98SE; m/b is a generic J-7BXAN, Intel 440BX
chipset. I have also tried the latest FujiFilm usb drivers.
Has anyone had a similar problem or any ideas?

Regards
Jim R.

 

[w_tom]

What was plugged into those original USB ports when they
died?

 

[Jim R]

What was plugged into those original USB ports when they
died?

A mouse & usb radio were plugged in at the time.

 

[w_tom]

To be damaged by the surge of a thunderstorm, a device must
be in a circuit path from cloud to earth ground. If a surge
entered on AC electric - the most common source of surges -
then paths to earth ground could easily be outgoing to earth
via modem on phone cable. Soundcard would need some
equivalent earthing path such as cable draped over baseboard
heater, or in contact with a linoleum or concrete floor, or
radio antenna wire.

So how would the original USB port be damaged? Strangely,
both mouse and usb radio still work suggesting that surge
might not exit USB interface on USB cable. Provided is little
to help since more information is required. But whatever was
damaged, involving the USB and soundcard, would or could also
explain why camera does not work.

BTW, this assumes the camera is compatible with USB 1.0.
Maybe card must be USB 1.1 compatible?

But to help identify what did fail and what may fail in the
future, as well as explain why something new might not work,
one must first learn the paths that a surge took to find earth
ground - destructively.

Can that motherboard USB be disabled? Another important
fact that may help define how surge passed through
motherboard. USB either has an option in BIOS or has an
onboard jumper to disable USB.