Connecting your Virus TI to a PC or Mac
To use a hub or not?
In general, we recommend you avoid using a USB hub between your computer and the Virus. With newer motherboard designs, however, the situation becomes a little bit more complicated. Some designs feature integrated USB hubs right on the motherboard, thereby removing the option of running the Virus TI without a USB hub unless you invest in a third party USB card. In many cases, however, this is not necessary and your Virus will happily work alongside other USB devices on one root hub.
✓ Prominent examples of such a design are modern Intel processors motherboards, such as those found in many Intel i5/i7 driven Macs and PCs.
Here are a few golden rules to guide you on your path toward the attainment of system perfection:
ﰀ If you have to use a hub, only use a quality USB2 compatible hub supporting high speed transfers. We had good results with, for instance, Belkin USB 2.0 hubs.
ﰀ Do not use devices generating loads of USB traffic, such as USB hard drives on the same hub or root with a Virus TI. Less demanding devices, such as mice and keyboards, are usually fine. Webcams and Bluetooth receivers are fine as long as they are not switched on.
ﰀ Do not use a hub to extend the maximum cable length of 3 meters. Most active cable extenders contain hub chips and some of those are known to be incompatible with the Virus TI.
✓ Additional information on how to examine the USB layout of your computer can be found in the Finding the “right” USB port paragraph.
Notes for Mac users
Pretty much all up-to-date Apple computers share USB ports available from the outside with internal components such as Bluetooth receivers, keyboards, trackpads, and built-in webcams. These devices have proven to work fine with the Virus TI and the warning that flags up when starting the Virus Control plug-in can be ignored. If you can, you should find a USB port available exclusively to the Virus TI.
Choosing the “right” USB port
The goal when choosing the port is to find one which doesn’t share its resources with another port - only this way, can you be guaranteed to get 100% of the bandwidth.
For Mac Users
System Profiler is the tool of choice to take a closer look at the USB topology of your Mac. To open the application, choose “About this mac” in the Apple menu and click on “More Info”. Then choose USB on the left. Assuming that your Virus TI is connected and switched on, your USB device tree might look similar to here:
Посмотреть вложение 78464
As you can see, my Virus TI shares a USB port with two other slow devices. In this case, this doesn’t result in a problem since there is still enough bandwidth left for the Virus’ communication.
