Second Data Panel Assembly
Finished the second USB assembly. This one's a bit different, and I may go back and try this on the original. Each board actually has two four port USB hub chips daisy chained. The USB extender is also a hub chip, so with all of these daisy chained normally on the back ports, I'm at the five hub limit of Windows. If I use a port on the PC that's on an internal hub, I'm over the limit. This assembly uses BOTH outputs from the second chip on the first board to feed each chip on the second board directly rather than dasiy chaining them. It required hacking the traces on the board, but reduces the depth of the chain by one (star instead of chain). So there are three external ports on the first hub, two on the second, and five at the third level.