"Mark Ayliffe" wrote in message
...
On or about 2005-08-04,
Tim Auton illuminated us with:
"Chris.B" wrote:

I have been getting conflicting advice from different specialist
dealers on whether I should use a USB 2 cable with my Toucam ProII
840K/20 webcam. The first sold me an active 5 metre Sandberg cable with
only USB 1.0, USB 1.1 spec and told me that the cable doesn't matter at
all whether for USB 1.0 or USB 2.0. I had already installed a new USB
2.0 card because the Toucam ProII didn't seem happy on USB 1.

The next dealer sold me a 5 metre passive USB2 cable and insisted that
a USB 2 cable was essential to work with USB2 devices and cards because
of the high speed requirements.

I seem to recall from actually reading the USB spec that there is no
difference between USB1 and USB2 cables.

If what you've got works it's fine, keep it. I'd expect to see errors
(not just performance degradation) if the cable wasn't up to the job.

Hmm, a passive USB cable would surely not distinguish between USB 1 and 2.
But at 5m you're on the edge of needing an active cable or extra hub
anyway.
It might help if you can place a decent quality hub at the camera end of
the
cable, if you're having problems. In theory you can chain the active
cables
up to around 25m (according to Maplin).



If its passive there is no difference ... if you need to power up the device
from the USB2 h/w then use USB2

At the end of the day USB1 is obsolete so why pay money for an obsolete
cable if you have a USB2 card.. you might neet this expensive cable for
something else in the future.