Strange Lockup- Solved

[htengrave]

I just shared this w the Gecko drive people and they said they had a similar problem a couple of months ago.
I had a G540, Mach, 3 Vista 32 bit, Parallel Card interface.
Every time I turned the G540 on, as soon as the drives powered up, the computer would lock up.
It did it even when Mach was not running...(that took me  a while to figure out).

To make a long story short, the problem turned out to me my wireless mouse transmitter.
The wireless mouse transmitter was in the back of the computer next to the parallel port cable.

When I moved the transmitter to the front of the computer, everything worked.

Some key points to the problem...
1. the mouse would stop moving as soon as the G540 was turned on..., the mouse would starting working again as soon as the G540 was turned off...it had nothing to do w Mach.
2. I had a wired USB keyboard, even though it looked like the computer was locked up, I found out that the computer was not locked up, the keyboard still worked.
3. Moving the USB transmitter to the front solved the problem.

Hope this helps someone.
It stumped me for a while.
Love my Gecko G540 and Mach 3.

[BobWarfield]

How odd!

Did the Gecko folks say why they thought this was? 

I'm wondering did the G540 somehow emit a lot of RFI that confused the USB port or the wireless mouse?

Just curious.

Best,

BW

[htengrave]

They only said they had seen this once.  If you think about it, there are alot of powerfull signals going on in that cable. 
My understanding is nothing is happening to the USB bus.
The problem is w interference w the wireless mouse transmitter that is connected to the USB BUS.
Again, the USB Keyboard that was not wireless worked, therefore the USB bus is working fine.

[Chaoticone]

htengrave, Thanks so much for shareing that with us. Little things like that will make you pull your hair out. You may have just saved a lot of hairs. 

Brett

[htengrave]

... I am glad I could post something useful.
These forums are a great source of info, I have spent many hours reading & learning.

One final note on the issue.  I do not see this as a G540 problem at all.
It's just two things doing what they do(G540 & wireless mouse), and they need to do what they do w some physical distance.

If someone really wanted to dig, they could look into shielding the cable and all kinds of good stuff.
I opted to move my usb mouse transmitter, it was a lot easier.

[ger21]

If I plug my camera into my PC, my mouse doesn't work. I need to place the camera as far away as possible to keep the mouse working. Apparently, the wireless signals for mice are easily interfered with.

[TOTALLYRC]

Considering how easy it can be to interfere with the wireless mouse and keyboard signals and how much damage can be done if it goes wrong at the most inopportune time, I have elected to stay with wired products including the game pad.
I am sure there are some industrial strength solutions out there.
I like to stay on the cautious side when it comes to keeping the machine tool under control.

Mike