30ft Monitor and USB extensions

[doug_hti]

I want to move my computer and external drives into another area. The distance is only 30 feet.
I'm only driving one VGA monitor and USB peripherals. I have a Motu USB MTP A/V, which is quite finicky, I realize....

So for video, can I get a 25ft passive VGA cable with the resolution being fine. If so, what brand of cable?
The monitor is a NEC flat screen 15". Although I plan to upgrade to a 19" in the near future. My video card is (I believe) the ATI Rage 128.

For USB, Do I need to run dual powered USB cables? One running to the MTP AV and one running to the hub for everything else?

My main concern is the video, as in the past I hooked up a shorter VGA extension cable and it degraded the quality a bit, but I believe it was a cheap cable...

I've been around Gefen stuff before, but it seems from previous posts that it's not a necessary need for cable runs this short.

Thanks for the help.

[sdemott]

AFAIK you should use a "repeater" type VGA extender (Gefen or Dr. Bott).

For the USB, you will need a powered hub (though if you have upgraded to OS X and 10.2.5 there is an ossue with USB hubs relating to kernel panics). Also, Gefen & Dr. Bott have solutions (albeit pricey solutions) to make things a little easier.

The limits for USB are 3 meters (about 9.9 feet) for slow (low bandwidth) devices and 5 meters (about 16.5 feet) for fast (high bandwidth) devices. Keyboards being "slow" devices means to extend your keyboard you will need 2 hubs (3 meter USB cable > hub > 3 meter cable > hub > 3 meter cable). For your high speed devices you will need only 1 hub (5 meter cable > hub > 5 meter cable).

Also, I would keep the different devices on different USB busses.

[jimlongo]

i just did this last week. Cables from NTI.

25 foot VGA extender cableVEXT-25 $28

and 2 x 5 meter USB repeater cables USB-AA-5m $60

They claim you can join up to 5 repeater cables in series, YMMV.