chewearn's blog

For a while now, one of my PC has been throw fits at the most irritating moments. It started mildly a few months ago. Randomly about once every few days, the PC would locked up hard. Only a full main power recycle would revive it. I put off trying to fix the problem for a while, because it happened infrequently.

Subsequently though, the problem got worst. It began to lock up every few hours. Then, I noticed a pattern. The locked up would only occur during prolonged data transfer over the network. It appeared that something was not quite right with the onboard gigabit network. Since the network was part of the motherboard, a full fix would entail replacing the motherboard. Unless if I could find an external network card.

Then, I remembered the USB-to-ethernet dongle I had stashed somewhere. It was a pretty old device and slow (10base-T) but it still worked. Also, since almost all the USB ports on the PC were occupied, I needed a USB hub as well. Luckily, in the same pile of junk where I found the old USB-ethernet dongle, I found an unused hub.

Actually, I bought the hub for about $15 a few years ago, but it was a dud from day one. It never worked right. When I plugged in a thumbdrive, the USB port went crazy, going off and on. I suspected something wrong with the power distribution in the device. But since it was $15, I could afford to discard it and get a new one. Of course, that was before the current recession and I became chronically unemployed.

Now, that $15 I wasted felt like gold. If only I could fix the USB hub, I would be richer, so, I gave it a shot. It took about 15 minutes to realise the problem was the USB cable, not the hub itself. There was a imperfect joint somewhere in the cable that came with the hub. I fished out a replacement cable from a stash of cables. (Yes, I got stashes of junk, stashes of cables, and other stashes).

A few minutes to jury-rig the USB hub to the side of the desk using a couple of cable ties and the problem is solved.

P.S.
If you are wondering why the USB-to-ethernet dongle is “naked”, that because it would stop working after a while due to overheating. So, I have to strip the dongle from it’s casing to improve air flow.

P.P.S.
Oh, and Ubuntu detected the devices flawlessly. No need to hunt for drivers, no need to install anything to get them to work immediately, no command line required; full plug-n-play.

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