[l008com]

Does a USB PCI card do 12 MBits/sec totaly (meaning all ports added together) or does each port do 12 MBits/sec, meaning a four port card could do a total of 48MBits/sec???

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[giantmike]

A four post card should have two busses meaning both pairs of ports would get 12 Mb/sec for bandwidth, totalling 24 Mb/sec.

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[Gregory]

The XLR8 Dual port USB PCI has two USB ports, each has full 12Mbps and more A/C than built-in. I would think 3rd party cards would. My B&W shares 12Mbps so you only get 0.6 on each usually and power can be trouble-some if you are using a USB modem that gets its power from USB ports as my Supra V.90.

All the G4 2000 and later systems have full 12Mps on each port.

Gregory

I've been looking into purchasing such a card and, in the process, have discovered that not all cards are created equal.
The biggest frustration I've experienced is trying to find specific info regarding bandwidth and ports.
With the Xircom card, it mentions a 2 port card delivering 12Mbps but not specify if that is per port or total. The reference they make to each port is for power with each
one delivering a full 500ma. I don't know if that would be an indicator of bandwidth and their website is less than clear on this.
Belkin's cards seem to deliver a full 12Mbps per port and their 4 port card (Quad Bus) delivers full 12Mbps bandwidth to each port - a total of 48Mbps.
A nice card but seemingly difficult to find (at least here in Montreal) and pricey (estimated US $60.00). The 2 port cards are plentiful though.

If you are only going to use the card to connect peripherals like a keyboard, mouse, printer or joystick the shared bus card would be sufficient given the slow speed
of those devices anyway (would still be faster than the ADB and serial ports). But for devices like CD-RW drives, hard drives, digital cameras and scanners, a dual or quadbus
card is recommended. In that case, I'd recommend going with a Belkin or XLR8 card. The nice thing about the ("never in stock") Belkin Quadbus is that it eliminates - at least initially-
the need for a hub.

(I'm still looking at the Xircom as a possibility given its price of CDN $32 but am still trying to find its specifics. If I do, I'll report back)

[l008com]

Well when i originally posted, I planned on having a keyboard, mouse, an aditionaly networking device, and 2 or 3 USB Cams, and possibly some sort of USB Networking. Now I might not have ANy USB cams, or maybe jsut one. But its nice to know i have a choice.

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