Fitting the Dongle

[BrianSP]

I had the notorious CopyMinder crash on my system that eventually lead to the use of a dongle. The folks at Dolphin were pretty helpful, especially Michael in UK.

My experience confirmed the comments made by others, the dongle is the best way to use Dolphin but it is a pain to have the darned thing sticking out of the USB port of a desktop computer where it can be snapped off, fall out on the floor when moving computer cables or otherwise lost.

The solution I used, which may work for other people, was to attach the dongle permanently inside the desk-top computer case. Most modern computer mother-boards have extra unused USB sockets on the board and cables that are designed to connect these sockets to external USB ports are easily available. The cables have a special mother-board connector on one end and a standard USB connector on the other. Simply plug the cable into the mother-board, put the dongle in the USB connector and secure the assembly with tie-wraps inside the case - you have a permanently attached, unbreakable, thief-proof installation and the dongle can be moved from one computer to another if needed by simply sliding the side off the computer case.

I do not know what the life-expectancy of a permanently attached dongle is but it should be about the same as other computer internals.