A Tale of Two Mainboards (A Cautionary Tale)

[717golfer]

I had for years been using ProTee 2. Worked well was happy. Fast forward to this year, I got TGC. Yeah! Now the system ran well but a little slow for my liking, the wait was long and the video slow. I didn't think the video card was the problem because I could see that the CPU was running at 100%. Well I got the bright idea that I would replace the mainboard and processor. Purchased a ASRock 990FX Extreme9 and a AMD FX-8350 Black edition 8 core processor. Installed and boy is this thing fast. I thought great this will be wonderful. Start the ProTee interface cameras are good. I even plugged them into the USB 3 ports for greater reliability. Open TGC, a soon as TGC gets to the welcome screen (after hitting enter) I could hear the cameras drop out, you know that sound you hear when plugging USB devices in, no more working camera. The system had NEVER done that before. I started chasing down rabbit holes. Posted here to see if anyone had suggestions. ProTee and Bnorman58 suggested that my cables were not sending enough power to the cameras. I didn't think that was the problem but I purchased the cables Bnorman58 said worked for him. Well that did not fix the problem. Now it got darker cause I started looking on the web, found many complaints about the USB driver for this board. Etron is the USB manufacturer, many bad things being said. I thought to myself wow now I found this out. I downloaded several new drivers spent hours trying to get them to work. Moved everything to USB 2 ports disabled the USB 3 ports (Suspect drivers were USB 3 drivers) suffice to say nothing helped. I was going bonkers. In the meantime I sent a request for a replacement mainboard. I will get that today. I have a never give up attitude when it comes to this kind of thing as I have been repairing stuff all my life. (It's what I do). So I kept going. Now the power supply in this computer is 600 watt and had not given me any trouble in 2 or 3 years,so that never crossed my mind. I thought about buying a PCIe usb card to get a different driver type, but luckily before I spent more money I found a 4 port USB hub powered by a separate transformer. Connected the cameras to the hub, the hub to the computer, powered up and hoped for the best. Well much to my surprise and joy the cameras worked, and because of the speed of the system, worked very well.

So what can we take away from this

1) Listen to ProTee if they say the cameras aren't getting enough power they probably aren't.
2) Sometime you may not need a new video card if your processor and mainboard aren't up to the task.
3) If you replace things in your computer and new troubles arise maybe you need a stronger power supply. After more research on the web I found this to be very true.

My fix for all this mess is to order a new 7 port USB 3.0 self powered Hub. The cameras draw very little current so a 2 amp power supply should be fine.

I will say that I am very happy with the result because the video on my screen is fantastic, it seems that with the more powerful mainboard and processor the video is cleaner. I do believe that it is a result of the mainboard and the way it handles video.

I hope this helps anyone looking to improve their experience. My hope for you all is Fairways and Greens, Birdies and Eagles.

[keither5150]

Good advice, I had similar problems a few years back with my GSA cameras. Camera would drop out occasionally. That was really annoying. I fixed mine by installing PCI express usb 3.0 cards .... one for each camera. That way, nothing else is on that port to screw things up. Since then...... nothing but smooth sailing. It is good to know that an external powered usb hub will work as well.