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Oh, how I miss having a working USB stack...

https://opensource.apple.com/source/IOUSBFamily/IOUSBFamily-...

They re-wrote IOUSBFamily (or at least they said they did) and it's buggy as all heck whenever you try use a USB 3 hub (since the 10.9 rewrite).

I'd fix it myself, but it's no longer open source. Plus, to really rub salt in the wound, there's no longer a USB debugging kext. Yay, Apple...

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I’m similarly displeased with the disappearance of the pthread subsystem in 10.9! I had to debug quite a nasty kernel bug, and was absolutely surprised when I discovered that all pthread syscalls are now stubs into a private kext.

I have some short USB 2.0 extension cables that I use to plug between the Macbook and USB 3 devices - to reduce them to USB 2.0. Because if I for example try to copy more than a few MB to a USB 3 external HD, the Mac freezes. Every single time. So that's working well then.

Try different powered hubs. Last week I discovered a USB key that eats so much power it won't run without a powered hub! Numerous external hard drives and optical drives are in this camp, too.

Does the power requirement change between USB 2.0 and USB 3? If not, I don't see why more power would change anything.

I also don't think a power problem on an attached USB device should give my computer a kernel panic.

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