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IOUSBFamily Affair

skunk

skunk

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jun 29, 2002
11,759
6,109
Republic of Ukistan
My Cube has begun to behave very oddly. Every time I try to scan something with my Epson 3200 through PS7, PS quits. I have reinstalled the OS, PS7 and the Epson driver. No change. I tried an fsck, and every time it comes up with hundreds of lines saying something to the effect of: "Trying to enumerate USB device" - which attempt evidently fails. It says the problem is with USB hub 3. I have no USB hub, except on the back of my ACD. There is nothing plugged into it. Any idea how I can test the hardware? I've repaired permissions, run Disk Utility, etc. Unfortunately, my Disk Warrior is obsolete, and anyway that doesn't really cover hardware faults, does it? Incidentally, the scanner is plugged into my FW port.
 
Well damnation. Let's have at this baby:

When did the issue start? Did it always do this? Did it start after a system update?

It really sounds like your bios is looking for a port that it thinks should be there (but isn't if you've only got one USB port) so I really want to point the finger at software. You've got the latest version of the driver from the epson site? Does TTP report the presence of a USB port 3? Can you run other things through the firewire port (is the computer "seeing" it and able to pass info along it).

Barring all that, how comfortable are you with cracking it open and poking around with a multimeter?
 
techound1 said:
Well damnation. Let's have at this baby:
Click to expand...
Well, thanks for offering.:)

When did the issue start? Did it always do this? Did it start after a system update?
Click to expand...
I first noticed there was an issue when I tried to scan something after upgrading to 10.4.6. Having tried everything else, I did a clean install of 10.4 on a spare partition, upgraded it to 10.4.4 with the Combo, and tried again. With no improvement. PS still quits after a scan, so does Epson Scan.
It really sounds like your bios is looking for a port that it thinks should be there (but isn't if you've only got one USB port) so I really want to point the finger at software. You've got the latest version of the driver from the epson site? Does TTP report the presence of a USB port 3? Can you run other things through the firewire port (is the computer "seeing" it and able to pass info along it).
Click to expand...
Yes, I've got the latest driver (reinstalled) and I've reinstalled PS7 too, just for kicks. I've checked ASP and it reports all is well with USB and FW, the USB and FW Extensions in the Library are "Satisfied" and "Correct", as they should be. I've switched the FW leads from my external FW HD and the scanner, and the HD still works (I can copy across no probs), but the scanner still crashes PS7. It's a real mystery, I tell you.

Barring all that, how comfortable are you with cracking it open and poking around with a multimeter?
Click to expand...
Not uncomfortable - it is, after all, a much-upgraded Cube - but since the FW ports both work with the external HD, it seems churlish to suspect the FW port. It can't be the cable either, as that worked fine with my iBook.

Over to you.:confused:
 
It seems you're not alone in the oddities after 10.4.6.

A number of problems with FW/USB/4.6 have been solved by unplugging everything and reinstalling 4.6 from the downoad package (rather than from auto updates). There are many, many out there baffled by why this works (and not for all).

The Mac OS is pretty intertwined with its BIOS, so partitioning and rebooting may not have corrected some BIOS issue that the download package takes care of (see me grasping at straws?). :D
 
You could try resetting the logic board by pressing the button labelled S1 in the figure.


58780_1.gif



That figure comes from this article, which incidentally outlines briefly how to reset the Cube logic board (toward the end). This should have the effect of resetting your ports, and some of their settings. :)
 
OK. I took the bugger apart, pressed the reset button, and the IOUSB message no longer comes up in the fsck routine, BUT the scanner still crashes photoshop and Epson scan every time I use it. I've even switched it over from FW to USB, and it STILL crashes.

EDIT: Finally got it working again, by stripping out everything Epson-related with Spotlight and reinstalling fresh. Halle-bloody-lujah!
 
Well done skunk. I don't think it would have been the logic board, but rather the ports (on the logic board) that were messed. Sometimes, something as small as a small power surge can make them start acting funny. Hopefully, it won't happen again. :)
 
mad jew said:
Well done skunk. I don't think it would have been the logic board, but rather the ports (on the logic board) that were messed. Sometimes, something as small as a small power surge can make them start acting funny. Hopefully, it won't happen again. :)
Click to expand...
Thanks for your suggestions, you and Techound. I'm fairly sure 10.4.6 did it, though, in the Library, with a piece of lead pipe - or in this case, a piece of sloppy coding. There have been quite a few posts in Apple Discussions, MacFixit and elsewhere indicating that 10.4.6 was the catalyst for similar port shenanigans. Seems you can't fix one thing without breaking another. Some Law or other, I suppose.
 
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