Well, it looks like my sort-of-shiny Sempron box isn’t going to play very nicely with me any more. Windows is constantly complaining about USB devices not working properly, even though there are no devices plugged in. That means that one of the hubs has probably gone and fried itself. More evidence of this comes in the fact that when I plug my USB 2.0 memory stick into certain ports (that I know full well to be 2.0 capable), Windows tells me that it’d do better on a 2.0 port.
Booted Kubuntu to double check, and it pretty much confirms that at least 2 of the 4 USB sockets are fried (or the hub behind them is), viz:
usb 2-4: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 111
usb 2-4: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 112
usb 2-4: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 113
usb 2-4: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 114
When I connect the keyboard to a working port, I get:
usb 1-3: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 4
usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: CHESEN USB Keyboard as /class/input/input5
input: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard [CHESEN USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:02.0-3
input: CHESEN USB Keyboard as /class/input/input6
input: USB HID v1.10 Device [CHESEN USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:02.0-3
One of my hopes for this year was to upgrade to a Core 2 Duo system (or an AMD X2) with a 7xxx series card from NVidia, or the equivalent from ATI/AMD. Unfortunately, part of the funds to do that was going to come from selling a working Sempron box with 1 GB of RAM. I could get a replacement motherboard, but that’s £41 shipped - which would probably be 50%+ of the price I could get for this machine without Windows on it. Doesn’t help that it’s a Socket 754 with AGP - both of which are essentially in the EOL stage of computer hardware. The other thing I can try is selling the parts on the Ars Technica Agora - tried it once before without any luck, but the second time might be the charm.
