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Pi USB Saga – An Embarrassing Fail.. – and a Warning! — 6 Comments

  1. I would like to share my experience and problems with a generic usb sound card plugged into the usb port of Raspberry pi.
    The USB sound card(C- media vid 0x0d8c pid 0x000e) responds properly to aplay command ONLY if it is inserted into the port AFTER boot up.
    If it is left connected to the port and the power is applied, it does not respond to aplay command. (meaning it does not play the .wav file)The error reported is
    aplay: hw_parms 1145: unable to install hw params:
    The only way to make it work again is to remove it and reinsert it.

    I have posted this in the Raspi forum a week back but there is no solution sofar.

    my OS is
    Linux raspberrypi 3.1.9+ #168 PREEEMPT Sat Jul 14 18:56:31 BST 2012 arm6l GNU/Linux

    Please forgive me if this is the wrong place to leave the above comment.

  2. Yes, as far as I can tell, the Pi USB connection does not meet the USB spec.. I will try the hardware fix again, as soon as I get the correct resistors…

  3. In my experience, ANY USB1.1 device (full-speed and low-speed) throws the dwc_otg driver in disarray. USB sound devices usually come in USB1.1 flavour, as yours probably is, and it’s quite a search to find a USB2.0 one..

    • Well, as far as I am concerned, USB is broken on the Raspberry Pi. There is a revised version of the board coming out, which is claimed to be ‘really no different’ to the original hardware, but does appear to have the ‘fuses’ removed?

  4. Yes, but the fuses are just another design flaw. Obviously, the whole thing is utterly broken. Foremost the USB in the SOC, which is some third-party IP bought by Broadcom. And even those Broadcom engineers don’t have a clue what’s going on. Don’t expect the thing ever to be working reliable. What a waste of time and money.

    • USB is a problem, but from my experience, everything else works just fine… The design is an engineering compromise, to achieve a balance of functionality vs low cost-of-ownership, and in that, it has been a great success..

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