MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

DMcCunney · 08-26-2020, 04:43 PM

"You are lost in a maze of twisty little Windows corner cases, all different."

I find myself involved in putting on virtual conferences. I'm a long time SFF fan, and help to plan and run literary SF cons. In recent years, my usual role has been managing the platform: I'm the chap that deals with the venue in which the SF con will take place. Queue COVID-19. Until the dust settles and a proven vaccine is available, in person gatherings like that are on hold. So various such events have to pivot and go virtual.

I was on the tech staff for CoNZealand, the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention originally intended to be an in-person event held in Wellington, NZ. COVID-19 hit, and NZ went into lockdown. An in-person con wasn't possible. The folks involved had to decide whether to simply cancel and refund everyone's money, or go virtual. They went virtual, but there wasn't enough time to properly do development before the event took place, so some things were still "under construction" as the event happened. And working on it was a science fictional experience because of the International Dateline. It was today here in NYC. It was tomorrow in NZ. (And it led to a number of "Just what do you mean when you say "today?" questions. "Just specify the date and use GMT for the time to avoid confusion.")

So I'm still involved in managing the platform, but it's virtual, defined by software, and largely living ion the cloud. The model used had Zoom for programming, and Discord for social activities, with a few other things to to complete the structure.

When you are trying to manage an event like that, there is no such thing as enough screen real estate. I managed, more or less, during CoNZealand with one big monitor and a 10" Android tablet, by putting different Firefox windows showing different things in Win10 virtual screens, but it was an imperfect solution. Several other SF cons I work on have also had to go virtual, so I needed a second monitor.

Easy enough. My preferred vendor, Micro Center, had an HP monitor similar to the one I already use at a decent price. But how do I connect it? The existing one plugs in via a VGA port, but there's only one on the desktop HP Small Form Factor PC. It does have two DisplayPort ports. But the second HP monitor connects via VGA or HDMI. There is a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, so add it to the shopping list. And the HP desktop has USB3 on the motherboard, which the machine it replaced didn't. As I am getting more USB3 peripherals, add a 7 port powered USB3 hub. And while I'm at it, get a second Sabrent USB3 drive enclosure to go along with the one I have, and I have several 2.5" SATA drives I'd like to connect on occasion.

Bring it all home, and connect it all up. Almost everything works. The second monitor is seen and used (though there is a 5 second or so delay before it activates and shows content. Not a problem, as it's a one time boot event.)

The 7 port USB Hub works - until I try to plug in the second Sabrent enclosure. I get an "insufficient USB resources to start the device" error. It doesn't matter if I plug it in the USB3 hub or directly into a motherboard USB port. That's...different. I thought I'd collected a complete set of Win10 error messages from previous adventures, but I ran into a limit I wasn't aware of.

One of the other efforts I went through was consolidating flash drives. I had several lower capacity USB2 drives I wanted to consolidate onto a larger one. Doing so let me remove four USB 2 drives from the existing 7 port USB2 hub. Hmmmm. I wonder if that freed up enough USB resources to let me plug in the second Sabrent enclosure? It did, and things work. Win10 thinks I have ten drives attached. One of those is the System partition for one of the other drives, and will get hidden. The rest are three internal drives, two drives in drive enclosures, and three USB flash drives.

Things are working as desired, but getting there has been a bit of an adventure.

And HelpdeskGeek has a good post talking about USB resources:
https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/h...on-windows-10/

"Oh, no! Not another learning experience!"

______
Dennis

08-26-2020, 04:43 PM	#761
DMcCunney New York Editor Posts: 6,384 Karma: 16540415 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: PalmTX, Pocket eDGe, Alcatel Fierce 4, RCA Viking Pro 10, Nexus 7	Windows USB resources limitations "You are lost in a maze of twisty little Windows corner cases, all different." I find myself involved in putting on virtual conferences. I'm a long time SFF fan, and help to plan and run literary SF cons. In recent years, my usual role has been managing the platform: I'm the chap that deals with the venue in which the SF con will take place. Queue COVID-19. Until the dust settles and a proven vaccine is available, in person gatherings like that are on hold. So various such events have to pivot and go virtual. I was on the tech staff for CoNZealand, the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention originally intended to be an in-person event held in Wellington, NZ. COVID-19 hit, and NZ went into lockdown. An in-person con wasn't possible. The folks involved had to decide whether to simply cancel and refund everyone's money, or go virtual. They went virtual, but there wasn't enough time to properly do development before the event took place, so some things were still "under construction" as the event happened. And working on it was a science fictional experience because of the International Dateline. It was today here in NYC. It was tomorrow in NZ. (And it led to a number of "Just what do you mean when you say "today?" questions. "Just specify the date and use GMT for the time to avoid confusion.") So I'm still involved in managing the platform, but it's virtual, defined by software, and largely living ion the cloud. The model used had Zoom for programming, and Discord for social activities, with a few other things to to complete the structure. When you are trying to manage an event like that, there is no such thing as enough screen real estate. I managed, more or less, during CoNZealand with one big monitor and a 10" Android tablet, by putting different Firefox windows showing different things in Win10 virtual screens, but it was an imperfect solution. Several other SF cons I work on have also had to go virtual, so I needed a second monitor. Easy enough. My preferred vendor, Micro Center, had an HP monitor similar to the one I already use at a decent price. But how do I connect it? The existing one plugs in via a VGA port, but there's only one on the desktop HP Small Form Factor PC. It does have two DisplayPort ports. But the second HP monitor connects via VGA or HDMI. There is a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, so add it to the shopping list. And the HP desktop has USB3 on the motherboard, which the machine it replaced didn't. As I am getting more USB3 peripherals, add a 7 port powered USB3 hub. And while I'm at it, get a second Sabrent USB3 drive enclosure to go along with the one I have, and I have several 2.5" SATA drives I'd like to connect on occasion. Bring it all home, and connect it all up. Almost everything works. The second monitor is seen and used (though there is a 5 second or so delay before it activates and shows content. Not a problem, as it's a one time boot event.) The 7 port USB Hub works - until I try to plug in the second Sabrent enclosure. I get an "insufficient USB resources to start the device" error. It doesn't matter if I plug it in the USB3 hub or directly into a motherboard USB port. That's...different. I thought I'd collected a complete set of Win10 error messages from previous adventures, but I ran into a limit I wasn't aware of. One of the other efforts I went through was consolidating flash drives. I had several lower capacity USB2 drives I wanted to consolidate onto a larger one. Doing so let me remove four USB 2 drives from the existing 7 port USB2 hub. Hmmmm. I wonder if that freed up enough USB resources to let me plug in the second Sabrent enclosure? It did, and things work. Win10 thinks I have ten drives attached. One of those is the System partition for one of the other drives, and will get hidden. The rest are three internal drives, two drives in drive enclosures, and three USB flash drives. Things are working as desired, but getting there has been a bit of an adventure. And HelpdeskGeek has a good post talking about USB resources: https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/h...on-windows-10/ "Oh, no! Not another learning experience!" ______ Dennis