computer help

hiya

my little sector of the world has finally caught up and broadband is now available! yaaaay.

here's where I get stuck.

The modem arrives next thursday from BT. It needs a USB.

My keyboard attaches to the PC via USB. The keyboard itself has 2 USB ports on (no idea if they are USB 1 or 2). One of them has my USB trackaball plugged in, the other is my only spare USB.

Do people think that such a USB will be up to the job in hand?

If not, I can get a USB card for the PC.

I have a spare card slot on the back, and a spare 'floppy disc size' port on the front beneath the floppy drive.

Anyway, I now understand the difference between USB 1 and USB 2, but could anyone direct me more towards the type of card I may need? there seem to be different words I dont understand -

like these:
CardBus
HP-HSC
ISA
PC Card
PCI
PCI-X

If I get the right one Im pretty sure I can put it in ok.

Anyone?

Cheers
Chris

 

What kind of PC have you got? I'm suprised theres only one usb port, 2 has been atx standard for years.
You'd *probably* need pci unless its a brand new machine or a laptop.

 

pc is a 533 pentium.

it does have 2 USB ports, but one has the printer in it, the other has the keyboard..

 

oh yeah, planning for the future, do the various types of squeezeboxes out there need a USB or a firewire or whatever?

 

Does the printer have a parallel interface on it? You could move it. And you need a pci card.
Dunno much about squeezebox but I thought they were on wireless? So you'd need a wireless network adapter

 

TTBOMK squeezebox comes in two flavours - wireless and cable. For the cable version you may need a network card installed in a spare slot on the PC. Some PCs have a network socket as standard. The connections are the RJ45 type I think, they look a bit like phone jack connectors. No firewire, no USB.

I ran a BT USB modem for about a year along with a variety of other USB1.1 and USB2 devices connected with a low cost 4 port USB PCI card.

I just upgraded to a wireless network at home and bought a Netgear Wireless Router/Modem. I now run Broadband through the Netgear instead of the BT. It connects to the PC via a network cable. Same BT connection, just a different way of connecting. Frees up a USB slot and seems to work just as good. I can now access Internet Radio stations even if the PC is switched off via my Philips Streamium 300 (like a squeezebox only more versatile).

Regards

Hex

 

As Hex said - no need for USB for a Squeezebox.

 

Hi Chris,

Which broadband package did you go for from BT? If you went for the Yahoo one, you'll usually get supplied with a Speedtouch 330 which draws its power from the USB port its plugged into (i.e. it doesn't plug into the mains). USB powered devices, well the Speedtouch 330 in particular anyway (IME as someone who works on the BT Yahoo tech support desk ) prefer to run direct off of their own USB port with no other devices connected. So this means that it wouldn't be a good idea having it plugged in via your keyboard as it would be sharing with other devices.

Either plug the modem straight into the back of your PC in place of your printer and connect the printer via your keyboard instead, or get a USB PCI card as others have suggested.

 

USB chaining with stuff like keyboard, mouse and printer isn't really a good idea as you have three devices on the one interupt. Get the card, its a much better way of doing things.

 

looks like a cheap card is the way. Found a five input USB 2 card for 8 quid!! so that will do.

At that price its worth a gamble.

Thanks Henry. Didnt realize thats where you worked?

Yeah, I went with BT for conveniance's sake. paying 17.99, and getting a modem with a seperate ethernet port on it so I can upgrade to a faster broadband link if I want to go X-box live.

Thanks for all the help everyone.

Looks like I just need a cheap ''PCI'' USB card.

 

You don't need a faster connection for xbox live it hardly uses any bandwidth at all

 

I don't actually work for BT directly, the company I work for and have been for the past 12 months gets call centre account work sub-contracted out to them from varous companies, BT or more specifically BT Yahoo just happens to be one of them. But yes, as it happens I'm currently working on the BT Yahoo tech support account.

If you're on the £17.99 (Broadband Basic) package, then that's not BT Yahoo, just "BT Broadband" - they are two distinct (in effect competing) ISP's which happen to share the BT brand name. Thanks to deregulation of BT in the 80's by Thatcher, everyone thinks that BT is still one huge corporation when in fact it's split into many separate business units each operating as an entirely distinct and independent business. Anyway sorry about the work related waffle.

If you're getting the modem with a seperate ethernet port then you could of course use that to connect to your PC, but presumably that would necessitate the purchase of a seperate ethernet network card?

The PCI USB card seems to make more sense anyway as you'd be killing more than 1 bird with that one stone.

Edited to add: On second thoughts, if you go ethernet on the PC, you could add an ethernet hub later on for the X-Box and connection for the Squeezebox too.

 

You could get both a usb and a network card for about £15 I should think.

 

i'd say get a PCI USB card 2.0 or 2.01 either it wont matter that much, also it my be worth your while getting a USB2.0 hub at some point for future connections.

 

Are you sure about that Anex? The bloke on the helpdesk seemed certain I should go for the twice as fast one - 2 gigabyte or whatever... 24.99 I think it was.

 

whats all this Hub and Network Card stuff?

What do I need that for?

(I dont really know computers)

 

Network card is because you have network capability on your modem, its a better way of running stuff (imo). The hub lets you plug many devices into one port, for example letting your xbox and pc share the modem (better than plugging the xbox into pc as you don't have to have pc on to play on live). A USB hub does the same but for usb devices.

 

ok. understand the hub thing now. can see why that could be useful.

I dont understand the usefullness of a network card thing if I only have one computer?

Am I still missing something?

 

You said you had an ethernet port on your modem didn't you? Thats the way I'd connect to my pc, saves a usb port. And you also mentioned the possibility of xbox live. Xbox has an RJ45 port in the back i.e. a network card. So to get on live you have three options, one is to unplug the modem from the pc and ethernet (RJ45) the modem into the xbox each time you want to use it, you could get a cross over cable (which is a special network cable which means you don't need a hub) and plug the xbox into the pc, turn on internet connection sharing and go on that way (which means you have to have the pc on when ever you want to go on xbox live) or the third and easiest way is to get a network card for the pc, 2 normal ethernet cables and a cheap hub (which wouldn't really cost much more than the cross-over cable) then plug the pc and xbox into the hub, then the hub into the modem. That way both devices are always ready to use without any uplugging.

 

Hi Anex thanks for the help

I think I see.

So, wanting to spend as little as possible to get what I want (and given the fact that the x-box live thing will be a few months away) -

My best bet is to forget about the USB card, and plug the modem via an ethernet cable into the computer.

Then when I want x-box live I need just to buy some cables, a network card and a hub.

Ok.

So how do I know if I have an ethernet port already on the back of my computer? Is this something else I need?

blimey computers are hard work