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Garmin Montana - Power Surge on Hub Port

Posted: 04 February 12 11:50 am
by blossom*
Whenever I plug my new Garmjin Montana into my computer, I get an error messgae that tells me I have exceeded the power limits of it's hub port.

What should I do???? Does anyone else have this problem?

Re: Garmin Montana - Power Surge on Hub Port

Posted: 04 February 12 12:58 pm
by CraigRat
Have you got ports in the back or the front that are not in use? try them.

USB Hubs inside PCs have a limited power output and having two or three devices in them is enough to exceed the 60mA or whatever it is that they can draw. moving some devices to another set of USB ports might spread the load a bit

Re: Garmin Montana - Power Surge on Hub Port

Posted: 04 February 12 8:45 pm
by blossom*
Thanks CraigRat. That seems to work. Well, I unplugged the printer and put the gps in there. Was it not having the printer that made the difference/ Or was it using a different port that helped?

Anyway, all good now \:D/

Re: Garmin Montana - Power Surge on Hub Port

Posted: 05 February 12 12:47 pm
by quiet1_au
blossom* wrote:Thanks CraigRat. That seems to work. Well, I unplugged the printer and put the gps in there. Was it not having the printer that made the difference/ Or was it using a different port that helped?

Anyway, all good now \:D/
If it's an unpowered USB then the total current drawn by all devices has to be within the limits of a single USB port's power limit. Front ports sometimes have less power than the rear ones too (as I discovered once with an external harddrive that made nasty sounds...)

As CraigRat says, try to use all the ports individually. If you need a hub to get more ports (eg laptop with many devices) and its an unpowered one try to use the lowest power devices in the hub (mice, keyboard), and the power-hungry ones (like USB powered devices - scanners, portable harddrives for instance) on the "real" USB ports.

A powered USB hub solves the problem by powering the ports from the mains, so it can provide full power to each (in theory at least - I have one at work that doesn't...) Some USB devices are borderline too - eg iPads draw more power than iPods so I discovered they don't work on the cheap USB mains adaptor I bought at work - annoying!!