I'm using an AVERATEC 3200 series laptop with slacware 10 and kernel 2.6.10. It seems when ever I mount an external usb drive, it only transfers files when I move the mouse plugged into another one of the other usb ports. I'm just wondering if anyone experienced this anomaly before and if you did what was your solution?
lspci output:
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 80)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 80)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
Thanx

Dude, I have the same laptop. All I can say is that USB 2.0 support with that VIA chipset is screwy as hell. VERY buggy, and I'm also using 2.6.10 with the EHCI driver. I ended up just buying a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card that uses an NEC chipset. Works like a champ. And since our laptop has built-in wi-fi, what else are you using the cardbus slot for?

--Akshun J

Strange.. I have VIA chipset USB-2 PCI card on my machine.

Support by the kernel is great. (2.6.7 & 2.6.10 -- tested).

I think my card is the same chipset as what you have.

VIA have open approach to their documentation on their chipsets. Therefore, the support by opensoftware community tends to be better.

Actually, that's really a myth. VIA's support for open-source is a whole lot of lip-service in my opinion. Just check out the myriad of issues discussed in their linux forum. http://forums.viaarena.com/categories.cfm?catid=28

However, I did misspeak myself. The issue is with the chipset and the interaction with the BIOS on that particular laptop. The BIOS have very few config options, and ACPI support is not 100%, so IRQ assignment to the USB controller does not function as it should. I believe disabling ACPI MIGHT fix the problem, but ACPI is critical for that laptop to function with any degree of proper power management.

Sorry, but VIA's supposed support of open source and linux is a hot button for me. My opinion is that it's only lip service. The actual resources put into development are minimal. Their drivers are horribly outdated, have por documentation, and are usually buggy and insecure. The unichrome VIA display drivers are a great example of this. The open source drivers created by the unichrome project are far superior.

--Akshun J

Yeah thats real strange, but ah well can't do much about that now. The suggestion of getting a pcmcia card is a good idea, btw I'm not using the pcmcia slot for anything right now so it's even better . Thanx for all the input, it was greatly appreciated.