MiSTer FPGA Forum

I have problems with USB hub board that i soldered. Red power led lits but nothing else does not work. I tried to connect it to old computer (I don't want to risk damaging the DE10-Nano) and tested the usb board with old 128 MB usb stick that is too old to be of any value today.

So the red power led lights when I connect external power to the USB board but the computer does not detect the board or the usb stick. I've tried every USB socket and none of the green leds or the usb stick itself does not lit.

I think i first had U2a reversed but reversing it did not help. Could it be broken now that it was installed wrong way?

Did some more testing. I have resistor at R1 and not R1a. So i tried to place jumper on P2. Now my Windows 10 PC says it cannot detect the USB device or it has problems. I'm trying to connect it with cable placed in J2.

I can't believe it. The problem seems to be with the cable that came with DE10-nano. I tried with another cable and now Windows detects the USB stick from every port the USB hub board has. However, it takes about 35 seconds before the stick is detected. Every port is equally slow. Is this normal? What about the R1a/R1? Should I change the resistor to R1a instead? I now tested with jumper placed on P2.

what version USB board? How are you connecting it to the de-10 ("L" connector, bridge, or cable), how are you powering the USB board?

USB hub v2.1. I haven't tried it in de-10 yet but I'm planning to first try it with L-connector. I'm eventually going to build a wooden case for mister and then i'll need to use cable to connect it to de-10. I'm currently powering the USB board with the power supply that came with de-10.

A bad powersupply can cause many strange problems.
So I would at least try another psu to see what happens.

And even if the psu works fine with the de-10 it can be that it works fine under a bit of load but then when used on only the usb board and most likely much less load maybe does not work as good.
For example maybe gives out to high or low volt.

Probably not this but is a easy test too do so why not.

If R1 is in the R1 (not R1a) position, it won't work without being connected to a host.
R1 selects the source for VBUS monitor for the hub chip. R1 = watch host VBUS (via P2), R1a is watch DC barrel connector.
If the hub chip doesn't see VBUS it wont activate

I moved the resistor to R1a (and removed the jumper at P2) and it worked! The usb stick was detected as fast as it should but i had to change the cable again. Now the cable that came with de10 worked and the other cable did not. Since it now appeared to work i decided to test the hub board with de10.

At first it worked. I used Mr Fusion Installation Method. Once the initial setup was done, i installed usb keyboard so i could run the update script. The script started and i leaved it to download all the stuff. When the script was done, the keyboard did not work anymore. No green light on the usb board and i think the red was not lit either.

I tried to turn power off and on again and only the red led was lit and sometimes it went off soon and sometimes it stayed lit. Keyboard was never detected. I tried another ports and another keyboard but no green led was never lit and the keyboard did not work.

So there must be something wrong with the usb board. What should i try next? I had only the usb hub board connected, ethernet cable, hdmi and this time i used Meanwell LRS-35-5 as power supply (that is what i'm going to use eventually). The de10 and usb board were powered with separate cables connected to the power supply (no splitter cable).

I removed the board from de10 and tried it on PC again. Seems to work fine. I'll need to try resoldering the L connector. It looks fine but maybe it has some cold joint.

Resoldering the L connector did not seem to help. I also tried to resolder the board pins for L connector. Everything checks ok with multimeter. The USB board still works on a PC but not on DE10, at least not usually. During the many powerups it actually worked maybe 4 times. Even when i got it to work, powering off and on again without touching anything and the usb board did not work on next power up. It seems to be completely random when it works with DE10. I don't have any cable to try without the L connector.

Last desperate attempt to try something and success! Sort of.
The USB board works every time (5 successful attempts without any failure) when i connect power to it after mister has booted up. After those five successful attempts the first attempt to power them at the same time and the USB did not work. Next attempt with delayed USB power up and success again. For some reason powering them on at the same time does not work. What could cause that and what should I do next?

And that trick stopped working. Maybe the DE10 is broken? I don't know if this is significant or not but i think the red led on the usb board is dimmer when it does not work.

do you have all 6 pins populated on the L connector?

Can you take a couple of good high-def photos of the USB Hub you made? Front and back, whole board. Might be easier to see if something is wrong with a picture or two.

Here are some pictures. I messed one side of the USB controller so i had to fix it with wire. I've tested with multimeter that there are no shorts between legs and all legs are connected where they should be.

Edit: Retested the board again on a PC. It no longer works. It is just the same as with DE10. All I get is the dim red light. I measured 1.66 volts over it. No voltage on USB port when I test with USB stick.

Hard to tell, but it looks like the green wire is shorting pins 15 and 16.
There's a lot of flux on the board, cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol would be recommended, especially around the FE2.1 chip.
The power control chip looks the right way around.
I usually put a 1/2 a little felt disc on the L connector pins to keep them from touching the underside of the DE-10. Is the L connector shorting against the DE-10?

I tested and there was no short. It is hard to tell from the pictures but the leg is bend up and then soldered to the wire. I also tested all the USB ports and there was no shorts. I bought isopropyl alcohol today so i can clean the board.

The L connector does not touch DE10 so there is no shorts there. It fits quite nicely.

Power control chip is correct now but it was wrong when i first tested. I'd like to test without the power chip. I looked at the schematics and JP1 and JP3 must be shorted to disable the chip. Is it enough or do i need to remove resistors? I'd like to test with as little modifications as possible.

I think you can get away with adding JP1, JP3 and remove R14 and JP2

I connected JP1 and JP3 and removed R14 and JP2. There was no change. I then tried to remove R12 and shorted R13. Again no change. Then i tried to make the bad side of the USB chip a little better. It now looks a little bit better but that didn't help either.

Finally i properly cleaned the board and resoldered every remaining resistor and capacitor. That finally helped! I haven't had any problems since. Then i restored all the power control parts and the board still works! So there was bad soldering somewhere even though i had carefully examined everything with magnifying glass (and i did that several times during all this testing).

The dim red light was some sort of indication of the problem. There was always red dim light when power was connected even without any usb device attached. Now there is bright red light (+green for the connector being used) when usb port is in use and no red light when nothing is connected.

Thank you for all the help.