Well, to be completely honest USB has come a long long way from where it was 2 or 3 years ago (completely useless), but I would not put a USB device in a location that is difficult to get to such as a mountain top. So far, in our testing, we really have not seen any reliability problems stemming from USB, however, the USB just wasnt really designed to be an "unattended solution". Im sure that no matter how many times we recommend to stay away from USB in a critical situation, that there will be some that just insist on doing it anyway, and we'll just see what kind of reliability they are able to attain. Go with the Quad PCI and a fan-less disk-less embedded PC on the mountain tops. You cant go wrong. Jim Dixon, WB6NIL
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:17:17 -0800 From: markhagler@gmail.com To: app_rpt@lists.illiana.net Subject: [App_rpt] USB interface reliability
Hello all,
I am building up a repeater to put on the air in Seattle as our first All Star node. I have the single-radio analog board which connects to my existing FXS card already but I don't want to put that up on top of a building in the long run.
I'm curious if the cheap USB audio adapters (such as the one that computergeeks sells for something like $8) are a good long-term, reliable solution. I'm interested to hear from others running repeaters in good repeater sites that are using the USB ports, particularly those with repeaters in commercial or high-density sites where strong RF fields from other transmitters are common.
The 4-port PCI card is certainly an option but given the price difference I would really like to make an attempt at the USB interface first but would like some advice of others on the stability/reliability of it. It won't be suitable for me if it's at all problematic as visiting this repeater site is not something I can do regularly.
Thanks
Mark Hagler _______________________________________________ App_rpt mailing list App_rpt@lists.illiana.net http://lists.illiana.net/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt