Adding USB Ports

[timinator]

Hi, I want to add more USB ports to my FC5 box. It's a HP Pavillion with an available PCI slot. Can someone recommend a 4-5 port card that would be compatible?

Thanks
Tim

[mbokil]

I bought the Belkin USB 2.0 Hi-Speed 5-Port PCI Card. It costs a little more but it works flawlessly on linux, Windows, etc. I got it from newegg.com

You might want to also buy a cheap USB hub. So I have a USB cable going into my Belkin card and then it plugs into a hub on my desk. This makes it easy so you don't have to pull USB cables out of the back of the PC to plug in new devices. One tip I have here is to actually buy two USB hubs. Plug your keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, etc. into a hub which connects to your old USB port. Plug all your newer USB2 drives into the hub connecting to your new USB2 card. On my box I found this allowed me to use a USB keyboard even at the Grub startup menu. Splitting them up like this can have the advantage of faster access when using USB drives since when the other devices are communicating the USB bandwidth will decrease since bandwidth is shared across a USB chain.