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USB Info: Frequently Asked Questions

Installing USB Support and Setting up USB Devices under Windows

Q1: How do I know if my PC supports USB? Where can I get USBReady?
A1: If you're using Windows 98 or 98SE, download the free USB evaluation utility. It will examine your PC's hardware and software and inform you of your PC's USB capabilities. As a quick rule of thumb, if your PC was made during or before 1996, it probably doesn't support USB. If it was made during 1997, it probably supports USB. If it was made during or after 1998, it almost certainly supports USB. Note that with some PCs, the USBReady will tell you that the PC supports USB, but you will not be able to find the USB ports on the PC. There were some manufacturers that misunderstood how to design USB into their products and forgot to add the sockets.

Q2: What's the deal with low/high power devices and bus/self powered hubs?
A2: You may connect high power devices to self powered hubs only and low power devices to either bus or self powered hubs.
High power devices are devices that draw more than 100mA from the USB power line, low power devices are ones that draw 100mA or less. High power devices are typically bus-powered cameras, bus powered hubs. Low-power devices are typically mice, keyboards, joysticks, and any devices that come with their own power supply (also known as self powered devices). Most general purpose hubs come with their own power supply as well and therefore are self powered. A subset of hubs called bus powered hubs gets power from the bus and therefore has the limitation of only supporting low power devices.

Q3: I just purchased USB speakers, will I lose any capabilities if I replace my Sound card?
A3: If your CD-ROM supports digital audio, the answer is no. To get USB audio to work, you need to set the USB speakers as the preferred audio playback device (see Control Panel->Multimedia Properties). Also, you must select "Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device." If you don't see this field, or it is grayed out, that means that the CD-ROM does not support digital audio.

Q4: Okay, I removed my sound card, but where do I plug in my microphone now?
A4: Several companies are developing USB microphones. One such company is Telex (http://www.computeraudio.telex.com/).

Q5: Sometimes my games work fine with my USB joystick/gamepad/whatever and sometimes they don't work at all. What's going on?
A5: Some games assume there's only one game controller connected to your system at a time. Thus, if you have multiple game controllers on your system, a game may not be able to find the right game controller. The easiest way to get around this is to plug in only one controller at a time, regardless of whether the controller attaches via a game port or USB.
In Windows, you can change the game controller's ID via Start->Settings->Control Panel->Game Controllers->Advanced. Typically, games that only look for one controller find the game controller with ID 1.

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