Subway, Poseidon, Hubs, & USB Printers

[Rabbi]

I'm experiencing some garbage while printing to my HP Deskjet 648c with the latest version of TurboPrint v7.6(?) setting the device to USBParellel.device, and using the latest version of Poseidon, ver 4.4 (?), with my NTSC A1200, and Subway.  I finally debugged what the problem was - the printer was plugged into a self-powered hub (Belkin?).  I removed the printer's plug from the hub & plugged it into the direct output of the Subway itself and it worked without printing the garbage it had been printing when connected to the self-powered hub.

My question is this:  What do I need to modify in the Poseidon configuration to allow me to plug the printer's USB cable into the self-powered hub without it printing garbage again?  Do I need to do something in regards to timing or handshaking?

Also, not every program would print garbage, such as TurboPrint utilities wouldn't, but a print in iBrowse would.

[Xanxi]

What exactly do you call garbage?
Is this printer USB or Centronics with an adapter USB cable?

[Rabbi]

This printer has both a Centronics & a USB connector on the rear of it.  I'm using strictly a USB cable (is it a type "A" USB connector that's popular printers?).

Definition of "Garbage" would be a string of characters printing out not as shown in the screen.

[danbeaver]

1) Poseidon itself does not like cheap hubs and gives error messages or errors
2) I had to pay 30 US Salad leaves to get a hub it did not give warnings about
3) If you have a printer with a Centronics interface, it always works better going parallel-to-Centronics. I got so fed up I bought a "LPT2USB" device to handle those issues until I was able to put both my printers on my home network.

[platon42]

I'm experiencing some garbage while printing to my HP Deskjet 648c with the latest version of TurboPrint v7.6(?) setting the device to USBParellel.device, and using the latest version of Poseidon, ver 4.4 (?), with my NTSC A1200, and Subway.  I finally debugged what the problem was - the printer was plugged into a self-powered hub (Belkin?).  I removed the printer's plug from the hub & plugged it into the direct output of the Subway itself and it worked without printing the garbage it had been printing when connected to the self-powered hub.

My question is this:  What do I need to modify in the Poseidon configuration to allow me to plug the printer's USB cable into the self-powered hub without it printing garbage again?  Do I need to do something in regards to timing or handshaking?

Also, not every program would print garbage, such as TurboPrint utilities wouldn't, but a print in iBrowse would.

That is a bit weird because once the data has been sent to the USB Host Controller chip it will send the data onto the bus with CRC protection -- if a packet gets garbled on the line, it will be resent up to three times by the controller (with the subway, this is software controlled, but I just had a look in the driver code and it looks okay to me). A USB 1.1 hub is just an electric switch and should not be touching the data on the bus. A USB 2.0 hub works slightly different as it will be buffering data temporarily for USB 1.1 devices, but the Subway is USB 1.1 Fullspeed only. So why it makes a difference is beyond me.

If it really happens that a USB packet is lost because of three consecutive CRC failures, the IO Request is retired with a write error. I am not sure if the printer driver on the TurboPrint side is prepared to handle that. If it will just ignore the error, it would explain the garbage line of text on your print. If that is the reason and the hub deteriorates the electric signal too much to let the packets go through without error, you have to use a different hub to fix the problem (also check your PSU -- USB doesn't like the voltage to drop too much below 4.8V).

There is certainly nothing you can (mis)configure in Poseidon for that.

[Xanxi]

Actually, i also have problems on my A1200 Subway with anything plugged behind an externaly powered hub, with hard drives, floppy drives and even USB keys not working good and disappearing and powercycling. That's not a problem with the Deneb with the same hubs and USB devices on my A2000 and A4000. I don't blame Poseidon here, only the Subway.

[desiv]

If you could test it with Anaiis, it might let you know if it's software or hardware..
http://aminet.net/package/driver/other/anaiis

I don't have a Subway tho and don't know how easy or difficult that would be..

desiv