PCA Forums

I bought a new Canon scanner that's USB 2.0 (which is new to me) but I'm not sure if I need an additional USB 2.0 card for maximum speed advantage or not. My ~1.5 yr old mobo ( Shuttle AK31) has 4 USB slots but I have no idea if it's USB 2.0 or 1.1 or how to tell.
The scanner works OK as is but might anyone here know if I need a 2.0 card and if I'd make a difference? The people at the local BB seem to give me different answers so I'm not sure.

I would assume it would be back-wards compatible. Which model is it? Are you experiencing any problems with it?

Yeah, USB 2.0 is supposedly backwards compatible (if the vendor writes the drives, etc, properly). Since your board is 1.5 years old, I doubt it's got 2.0. But to check open up COmputer Management under Control Panel/Administrative Tools then look under the "Components" tab of the "System Information" part. It would say "USB 2.0 Root Hub".

Odds are, it might transfer the info from the scanner to your PC slower if it's not using usb 2.0, but thats about the only downside.

the ak31 has usb 1.1...i have the same mobo. i bought a 2.0 card and hub for it. it is backwards compatible but MUCH slower.

That answers most of my question, thanks.
It is backwords compatible and works BUT if it's any faster by adding a $39 card, then that's what I'll do. It's a Canon Canoscan 5000F that I bought mainly to scan my MANY old 35mm slides to the HDD so that I won't need to use the old slide projector equipment for that anymore (pure digital for me from now on). My new DVD player also runs jpegs through the TV.

Now....I've seen the card but do I then need a hub as well?

You want to use the 2.0 on more than the two devices. If you don't have a need for it at this time, not need to spend more money than you have to. eGo

I don't think that any other USB device (eFilm reader-4, 2+ yr old Digital camera, Garmin eMap, cordless mouse/keyboard) uses USB 2.0 as I've never read that term before until recently, when I bought this scanner.

I have my doubts that you'll see a big speed increase on a 2.0 port. Though my only way of testing it so far is uploadiong images from my camera. Using a usb 2.0 it is roughly 30-40% quicker. But 1.1 wasn't slow.

My scanner is usb also and I can't tell any speed diff from 1.1 to 2.0. But I think it is probably only 1.1.

2.0 can make a huge difference...just depends on what you're doing. i have a USB 2.0 hard drive and tried copying 20GB of mp3's onto a USB 1.1 system. let's just say i cancelled the transfer.

card readers don't go that fast because of the flash memory cards i bet. their transfer rate is limited, so a big difference is not seen between the two. when using cdrw or hard drives...then 2.0 shines.

It all depends on th size of the scanned image. If your image sizes are small, it wouldn't be beneficial, but if they are large, 50+ megs than I would say get the add in card.

I installed it and the scanner does scan faster now so I'm happy. The card gave me a few probs as it the ol' PC was fussy about which slot I was trying but after 3 attempts and some snarling, I finally found the acceptable slot