Very strange problem with my front USB ports
 

Hi there,
I'm running slackware 12.0
Yesterday, I plugged my USb key into the front USB ports of my box. Slackware didn't recognize it and the icon of the flash key didn't pop up in the "System/Mass Storage" window on KDE. This seemed quite crazy to me. I unplugged the the flash key and plugged it into one USb ports on the rear of the box, and there the key worked fine.
A bit surprised, I rebooted the PC and loaded windows (yes, I'm still dual booting...:p) The flash key worked fine there both in the front and in the back USB ports. Only, a small popup told me that the front port were 1.1 ports, and the device would achieve better transfer rates if I plugged it into a 2.0 port.
I know this problem is quite weird, but has anyone out there experienced it, and found a solution?
Thank you in advance,
Boris

Seen this before on machines with front and rear USB ports. They usually use one on a 2.0 USB controller and the other on a 1.0-1.1v USB controller. Why who knows. But for USB one uses the ehci-hcd module for 2.0 USB controllers. On 1.0 -1.1 ones there are two choices based on the chipset. Either ohci-hcd or uhci-hcd. You could run the command ' /sbin/lspci -v ' and see what is said about the controller. Then run the command ' /sbin/lsmod ' and see what modules are loaded. It could have chose the wrong one. But in my experience there are some 1.0-1.1 USB controllers that just don't work even if the correct module for the chipset is selected.

Brian

This seems to be my case. I typed lspci and lsmod...and I found out my USB controller should use uhci, and the uhci module is loaded. I will try loading ohci module anyway and see what happens.
Thanks,
Boris

Glad to be of help.

Brian