USB PORTS on the motherboard WORST INVENTION EVER.

[Skybuck Flying]

When USB was invented I thought what I stupid idea.

Who the fok powers devices via a communication cable ?!

Only a NUTCASE would have thought of that ?!

And my feeling has become a reality.

THE USB PORTS ARE DESIGNED SO RETARDLY that it is actually possible to
connect the USB PLUGS wrongly very easily !!!

As a result of the power flowing through the USB cables this will FRY the
motherboard in such a situation.

NOW COMPARE THIS TO OLD SCHOOL STUFF:

IDE CABLES.... AND PLUGS AND PORTS....

At least those would not cause pin mis alignment on better designed
motherboards... the better ones have a plastic rectangle around it... so it
will only fit properly...

ALL MOTHERBOARDS I HAVE SEEN SO FAR includings those of ASUS and ASROCK have
no rectangle around USB PORT ?!!!!


FOK THEM.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

The following went wrong:

USB port pins:

..
...
...
...
...

plug was connected as follows:

xx
xx
xx
xx
xx
...

One row too high !

This happened because I did not want to take apart my entire PC...

It was a bit dark, as usual in cases... !

Tried plugging it in from the side...

Or maybe I even did it from the top with full light...

Apperently somehow it happened ?!

WEIRD !

Perhaps something else killed the motherboard, but this is a prime suspect.

The question is now:

Could it actually have killed it ?!

Me think so, but somebody with detailed motherboard and pin layout will have
to investigate further.

I might also do so later on...

I also suspect the "ground wire" got electrified... or perhaps eletricity
tried to escape via it... the eletricity ended up into the
soundblaster/receiver it was hearable...

I wonder if a grounded-pc might have prevented damage... I don't know... PC
is not grounded.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

It sux pretty hard. This build was an experiment to see what would happen if
I would buy the latest and greatest as all those benchmarking and review
sites promote more or less.

I did have a lot of fun with Battlefield 2 and other games... but I am
pretty much done with shooters... After playing those for 20 years I simply
became too good at it... also having a super computer helps.

I am pretty much completely done with this system/build. It kept dieing for
many different reasons.

The case is full with damaged harddisks because of cleaning the dust
filters, which were ultimately removed.

I kept the fans on medium speed. This still sucked in a lot of dust. I blew
out the dust via breath and that worked after picking out big dust parts
with pincet.

If I do rebuild it then I will put the fans on low as a final and last
experiment.

If I do buy a new pc in the future it will be a closed PC as much as
possible to keep dust out... very low airflow and as much as possible
passively cooled and low noise. Even such a PC would not have prevented the
stupid usb plug bullshit... I just googled it and it seems I am most
definetly not the only one who has now run into this issue it totally sux.
Perhaps I will try and get warranty claiming that "USB port design is
flawed/error prone" and that I deserve a replacement. Though I don't
necessarily want to cause an argument with the webshop... however there are
other reasons why I might not do that.

For now the first thing I want to know if the delock device was flawed in
it's design and may have caused unnecessary damage.

So both devices could be blamed... both both at the same webshop.

Fo now I just want to know what went wrong and why it killed my motherboard
to try and prevent it in the future... a nasty learning experience.

I want to buy a tablet really badly and dump the whole pc idea...
unfortunately I cannot because of information stored on harddisks, and the
low resources that tables have.

Thx for the tip about USB 3.0 though... I hope it's fixed in USB 3.0...

I will make damn sure that my next motherboard has USB 3.0 and a minimum of
plugs that could be plugged wrongly.

Also perhaps I will dump the AMD X2 3800+ processor just in case... 2 of the
heatsink's screws broke off when I tried to unscrew it from my chair lazy
when the pc was not in front of me but side ways/front towards me as usual.

Apperently PC's are so fragile they require an operation room like churgery
! Anything else and damage is prone to occur That kinda sux.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

No it's a bad idea and here is why:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2602300

"
My gf accidentally put a stereo jack into a USB 3.0 port in the dark, and it
killed her computer.

That is, the power supply is functional and it turns on, but the monitor and
USB devices do not work.. so presumably it doesn't even get into the bios.

Anyone have any experience with this? I *think* it's a short circuit.. but
I've never short circuited a PC before, so I don't know where to even start.
"

Let's be gratefull that it wasn't 220 motherfokking volts !

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

A nice document about the problems with USB, and possible
solutions/protections for eletronic designers (?):

http://www.digikey.nl/Web Export/Su...appnote-usb2-usb3-protection.pdf?redirected=1

Mentions:

Power surges, over-voltage, over-ampere stuff like that.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

How can that be possible? Isn't there that 3 pin connector at the power
supply.

Yes, the wall socket doesn't have a ground pin as far as I know...

Just 2 pins.... (Europe).

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

I was thinking the same thing...

Instead of getting a device I could also store my information on "the
cloud"...

However if internet goes offline well then you know what would happen...

A network attached storage device is still not usefull for me without
processing power...

That's the main thing right now... getting more processing power... and then
I can get my data back and so forth.

Also not a lot of room for even more devices... where would I place a nat
device... I'd be a bit worried if I kick it on accident... at least with
everything inside the PC I know I have to be carefull... however the
occasional bump against the table might also not be too great.

However a kick from the feet is probably much harder than a bump against the
table

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

I am not so sure about USB 3.0 anymore... it's ampere is even higher...
sounds fricking dangerous.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Pete]

Moving to a single cable for data & power is definitely a great idea,
reducing cost and improving connectivity. Without this the USB pen drive
would be extremely impractical, this is a device which has taken the
world by storm, and for good reason. I go nowhere without mine incase my
FTP server is offline and I need a piece of software.

I agree with your other post regard better fool-proofing at the
motherboard side. This is something they have addressed with USB 3.0, it
can only be plugged in one way

Pete

 

[Flasherly]

I keep a couple bottles of pink and green, ladies nail polish around
these days.

Always grabbing or poking something the wrong way, so I label anything
repeatedly exasperating with color codes.

Like my newest logitech mini-3Ghz (or something, works without direct
line-of-sight off a USB Rcx, anyway) -- real tiny thing with such a
horrible mouse touchpad I supplemented by digging out the old, regular
IR mouse -- the critical keys are painted pink & green for sitting
small on a coffee table without having a bunch of lights going for
music or a video.

Or USB sticks, just paint one side with a pink stripe for getting it
right.

If bored, of course, doing one's teeth in alternating pink and green
is always interesting.

 

[Paul]

Moving to a single cable for data & power is definitely a great idea,
reducing cost and improving connectivity. Without this the USB pen drive
would be extremely impractical, this is a device which has taken the
world by storm, and for good reason. I go nowhere without mine incase my
FTP server is offline and I need a piece of software.

I agree with your other post regard better fool-proofing at the
motherboard side. This is something they have addressed with USB 3.0, it
can only be plugged in one way

Pete

http://liveweb.archive.org/http://m...rboard Micro-ATX Power Socket to far away.jpg

What could possibly go wrong in there ?

The way he installs stuff, it's pretty hard for the header *not* to be visible.

This is a previous motherboard in the Dream PC. Same idea.
Wires generally out of the way. My PC isn't this
clean looking inside. But, I'm a lot more careful
with headers. I don't plug them in "hot" or anything.

http://liveweb.archive.org/http://members.home.nl/hbthouppermans/DreamPCThirdBuild/DSCN1169.JPG

Paul

 

[Pete]

That case is screaming out for a RAID array, looks like it is a nice
quiet build also. An SSD and a passive CPU cooler will have a really
quiet and low power sucking machine.

 

[Pete]

lol oh dear.

Any computer he touches sucks. He's the one that Murphy warned you
about. He studied under Lucas. He's the village idiot for the entire
EU.

 

[Johann Klammer]

I wonder if a grounded-pc might have prevented damage... I don't know... PC
is not grounded.

How can that be possible? Isn't there that 3 pin connector at the power
supply.

 

[Pete]

More of the same:
<http://failblog.cheezburger.com/thereifixedit/tag/computer>

Well it certainly wont suffer from thermal issues. I'd love to see an
EMC testers face if I landed down to the chamber with that!!

 

[Pete]

Why not get yourself a cheap NAS drive and transfer all of your data
onto that. you can generally access these from tablets so you should
still have access to your data.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

I think we've found your (real) problem. Use a socket with those grounding
brackets, not one for electric shavers/hairdryers. The buzz you hear from
your soundcard is the line frequency(50 Hz). The case is a big capacitor
and may charge up to line voltage. You cannot expect the thing to suffer
repeated discharges(when you touch it) and continue working.

I didn't touch the PC when the buzz sound occured.

I suspect the USB Plug misalignment caused the buzz sound on the DreamPC.

The same buzz sound happened on the Pentium III 450 mhz when one of those
power connectors/hd leds/power switch connectors was wrongly connected I
think.

The real question is:

What would have happened if the PC was grounded ?

Would the misplaced USB plug go undetected ?

Would it have prevented damage ?

In a way maybe it was a good thing the PC was not grounded, at least I heard
literally that there was a problem.

Unfortunately it did cause damage.

If it didn't then the usb drive/card reader probably wouldn't have worked
and I would have found the misaligned plug eventually.

I also live in an appartment high up, so I am not sure if grounding wall
sockets is a good idea.

I have explored this topic in the past...

I don't want to change the wall socket because I don't know if that's
safe... I don't like changing things which have worked for tens of years for
other people...

For all I know it might make matters worse and there is definetly some
thruth to that...

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

My thoughts on wireless network attached storage devices:

1. If it doesn't have encryption forget about it

2. Health risk.

3. Interference/corruption risks.

Some other possibility:

Microsoft's SkyDrive + Encryption + Windows Shell Integration.

Could be nice... but maybe the bandwidth too slow...

Yeah probably waaaayyyy too slow... 350 KB/sec upload speed.

We can safely forget about that as well.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[rickman]

Only true for type A USB connectors. All the others, including micro
and mini USB, have beveled corners.


You have it backwards. The power comes from the motherboard and is
used to power the peripherals. If you have a peripheral that sources
power via the USB cable, you're doing something very wrong. The only
case where that MIGHT happen is a USB to USB transfer cable.
It's not a problem on cell phones because even though the phone has a
battery, the USB connector does not source this power. Check your
wiring and your assumptions. ....snip...

The plastic rectangle and wide base plugs are in the mini-USB and
micro-USB specification to prevent the brute force misalignment of the
connector causing adjacent pins to short. The plastic rectangle is
designed to center and align the metal frame around the jack. I'm not
sure if it's in the spec.


If ATX style, they have a metal escutcheon plate that serves the same
purpose.

He is not talking about the USB connectors, he it talking about the two
row header on the motherboard! Everyone knows they are a bad idea, but
they keep using them because they are very inexpensive and it is assumed
that only people who know what they are doing plug things into the
motherboard.

I feel his pain. I have had to wire up front panels to motherboards
with virtually no documentation so that even if you can see what you are
doing it is hard to get it right. The computer only survived because it
tolerated having LEDs and switches plugged in wrong. But being lazy
around PCs is not a good idea. They are sensitive beasts and a little
static or too much pressure in places can do damage. Know that and act
accordingly. Ranting about the manufacturers is pointless.

Rick

 

[cLx]

You have it backwards. The power comes from the motherboard and is
used to power the peripherals. If you have a peripheral that sources
power via the USB cable, you're doing something very wrong. The only
case where that MIGHT happen is a USB to USB transfer cable.
It's not a problem on cell phones because even though the phone has a
battery, the USB connector does not source this power. Check your
wiring and your assumptions.

Oh, this happened with my laptop and a cheap "ICD2 like" PIC debugger with a
powered electronic prototype. Just avoided my laptop to boot, a led was
somewhat lit. Then I cut the link, saw my PC booting, and considering myself
lucky !