Dear All,

Several of you offered some help with my crashing problem - a Netvista
which repeatedly hung while running Ubuntu. Hung as in "stopped dead"
- nothing in the logs, no ssh access from outside, nothing. I was
advised to check the hardware and sure enough, reseating a displaced
video card seemed to do the trick.

Well, it started doing it again. Video card reseated ... still
happened. Video card moved to another slot ... still happened.
Switched on onboard video ... still happened.

Until ... I unplugged my Tesco USB card reader [*]. MTBF was 30
minutes before, machine has now been up almost 4 days.

Ian

* And also a USB bluetooth dongle, but I've had that for ages.

In article <2f82b53a-524d-4fdc-ad61-3dfc98c86095@34g2000hsh.googlegroups
.com>, Ian  writes

>Until ... I unplugged my Tesco USB card reader [*]. MTBF was 30
>minutes before, machine has now been up almost 4 days.

Which Netvista (chuipset/cpu)?  

We've had problems with HP Proliant DL380s locking up hard when using
USB memory sticks.  Some machines seem worse than others.  Having the
motherboards replaced under warranty made no difference.

I'm wondering if it could be a variant of the well-known ICH5 USB
problem.

-- 
(\__/)   Bunny says NO to Windows Vista!
(='.'=)  http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
(")_(")  http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf

On 12 Aug, 08:31, Mike Tomlinson  wrote:
> In article <2f82b53a-524d-4fdc-ad61-3dfc98c86...@34g2000hsh.googlegroups
> .com>, Ian  writes
>
> >Until ... I unplugged my Tesco USB card reader [*]. MTBF was 30
> >minutes before, machine has now been up almost 4 days.
>
> Which Netvista (chuipset/cpu)?

It's an 8318-31G. Pentium 4, 2.4GHz, and to quote the Lenovo specs
page:

    * Intel 845GV chipset
    * Integrated Intel Extreme graphics
    * Intel Hub Architecture
    * Memory Controller Hub (MCH)
    * I/O Controller Hub (ICH4) for PCI 2.2 bus
    * SMBus device support

> We've had problems with HP Proliant DL380s locking up hard when using
> USB memory sticks.  Some machines seem worse than others.  Having the
> motherboards replaced under warranty made no difference.
>
> I'm wondering if it could be a variant of the well-known ICH5 USB
> problem.

I hadn't heard of that, but a quick google suggest that restricting
USB to 1.1 in the BIOS might help. I'll try that when next I reboot.
My last USB SD card reader behaved very strangely with this machine -
copied file implausibly quickly, missing huge chunks out, overlapping
data and so on. I assumed it was wheat you get for a five quid card
reader from Argos - although it worked fine on an Asus WL-HDD WAP -
but perhaps it was the Netvista USB playing up then as well.

Ian

On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:00:34 -0700, Ian wrote:

> I hadn't heard of that, but a quick google suggest that restricting USB
> to 1.1 in the BIOS might help. I'll try that when next I reboot. My last
> USB SD card reader behaved very strangely with this machine - copied
> file implausibly quickly, missing huge chunks out, overlapping data and
> so on. I assumed it was wheat you get for a five quid card reader from
> Argos - although it worked fine on an Asus WL-HDD WAP - but perhaps it
> was the Netvista USB playing up then as well.
>
Are the USB ports integrated in the motherboard and have you got a spare 
PCI USB adapter card or can you borrow one? If so, it would be worth 
while checking if its a motherboard USB problem by moving all your USB 
devices to the PCI card. 
 

-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

On 12 Aug, 12:07, Martin Gregorie <mar...@see.sig.for.address.invalid>
wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:00:34 -0700, Ian wrote:
> > I hadn't heard of that, but a quick google suggest that restricting USB
> > to 1.1 in the BIOS might help. I'll try that when next I reboot. My last
> > USB SD card reader behaved very strangely with this machine - copied
> > file implausibly quickly, missing huge chunks out, overlapping data and
> > so on. I assumed it was wheat you get for a five quid card reader from
> > Argos - although it worked fine on an Asus WL-HDD WAP - but perhaps it
> > was the Netvista USB playing up then as well.
>
> Are the USB ports integrated in the motherboard and have you got a spare
> PCI USB adapter card or can you borrow one? If so, it would be worth
> while checking if its a motherboard USB problem by moving all your USB
> devices to the PCI card.

Both PCI slots are in use at the moment, but one is a wireless card
which I could easily swap out ... I will look into getting a PCI USB
card.

Ian

Ian wrote:
> On 12 Aug, 12:07, Martin Gregorie <mar...@see.sig.for.address.invalid>
> wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:00:34 -0700, Ian wrote:
>>> I hadn't heard of that, but a quick google suggest that restricting USB
>>> to 1.1 in the BIOS might help. I'll try that when next I reboot. My last
>>> USB SD card reader behaved very strangely with this machine - copied
>>> file implausibly quickly, missing huge chunks out, overlapping data and
>>> so on. I assumed it was wheat you get for a five quid card reader from
>>> Argos - although it worked fine on an Asus WL-HDD WAP - but perhaps it
>>> was the Netvista USB playing up then as well.
>> Are the USB ports integrated in the motherboard and have you got a spare
>> PCI USB adapter card or can you borrow one? If so, it would be worth
>> while checking if its a motherboard USB problem by moving all your USB
>> devices to the PCI card.
> 
> Both PCI slots are in use at the moment, but one is a wireless card
> which I could easily swap out ... I will look into getting a PCI USB
> card.

I got this one to upgrade my USB 1 only system and it worked straight
out of the box on Mepis 7:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamode-PCI-USB-Host-Card/dp/B0007SQKTK/