Any Port in a Storm: Keyspan's Five-Port USB 2 PCI Card Sherwood AR

Posted by : Joe Farace Hardware reviewhed: Any port in a stormdek: Keyspan's five-port USB 2 PCI card should untangle that rat's nest.

The times they are a-changing. The old familiar serial, parallel, and SCSI ports are rapidly disappearing from computers and are being replaced by USB and IEEE 1394, a.k.a. FireWire or iLink, connections. Because it provides a reasonably quick transfer rate at low cost, USB has become the de facto standard for many peripherals, but is far from being a panacea.

Most computers provide only two USB ports, and while devices can be daisy-chained, I haven't found many devices (other than keyboards) that permit this. After you've plugged in the keyboard and a printer, there are no ports left. Hubs are one answer to a lack of ports, but hub users quickly discover they are not a perfect solution. Some devices, such as removable media drives, won't work through a hub and unpowered hubs often can't handle devices that draw power from the USB line. Keyspan www.Keyspan.com has the answer for Mac OS (including beige Rev B G3 models) and Windows computer users who find they lack enough USB ports-and it tosses in a bonus.

The five-port USB 2 PCI card for Windows and Mac OS provides four additional external USB ports as well as one internal one for adding a device in the drive bay. Installing it in my Power Macintosh G3 computer was a snap: I opened the side door, unscrewed the slot panel, plugged in the card, and turned the computer on. ...

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