I'm wondering what makes a good hub PCB layout. I just don't know what circuit elements to look for.
SL4P,
Sean, those Belkins, do you judge them based on the actual circuit or just the fact that they seem to work?
I don't think you'd usually run into problems even with "unsafe" hubs. For example, I have the below 4 port hub. No problem so far (though, I've mostly used it with self-powered devices, which I assume are beefier and more likely to have protection). The layout of this hub doesn't look too inspiring either, but then again, what do I know.
$40 for a hub is far too much. The hub in the first post could probably be made safe with an extra $1 worth of components. I was also looking specifically for a small PCB, 4-5 horizontal ports next to each other, the rest from another side. Besides the frying, another negative with the fishy hub is that it uses two 4-port hub chips instead of a single 7-port one.
amyk: I never had problems with devices connected directly to the computer I tested the hub on. Vbus on the hub powered from the computer is 5.1V. The port I used to connect the hub is off a PCI card, BTW. Can you think of failure reasons other than overvoltage? I guess coincidence is possible but I've never had a USB device die, and this one did just when I was testing the new hub.