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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / March 2007USB 2.x ports not seen by older Mac
My dual 1Gig G4 Mac was made before USB 2 came out and has only 1.1 ports. I bought a card with two external USB 2 ports and just stuck it into the Mac. I had been told that I needed nothing else, that the Mac came with drivers and such (I'm now on 10.4.9). I've connected a 2.x device to one of the ports, and the device doesn't show up on the desktop. It does appear and is accessible using one of the 1.1 ports. What am I missing? Should I have some software with the card for the Mac to see it?  SignaturePhil Stripling | email to the replyto address is presumed The Civilized Explorer | spam and read later. email from this URL http://www.cieux.com/ | http://www.civex.com/ is read daily. > My dual 1Gig G4 Mac was made before USB 2 came out and has only 1.1 > ports. I bought a card with two external USB 2 ports and just stuck it [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > What am I missing? Should I have some software with the card for the > Mac to see it? Just went through some discussion about USB2 and older Macs in comp.sys.mac.misc a while back. Anyways, the card is likely OHCI, you plug it in and it works as USB 1.1. If you install drivers (which OS X may do for the card if it finds it during installation, not updates...), the EHCI part of the card that supports USB2 gets activated. So yes, you may need to have a driver installed or you might have to reinstall OS X so it can find the card during installation and install the driver for it. I haven't actually made certain about any of this, it's just information I've gleaned from researching the subject and wondering if my USB2/Firewire 400 card will do USB2 if I ever plug a USB2 device into it... Greg B. PS. The subject for where some of this was discussed in comp.sys.mac.misc is 'Combined USB2 + firewire PCI card for G4' and it started at 2/11/07... SignatureActual e-mail address is gregbuchner and I'm located at gmail.com > PS. The subject for where some of this was discussed in > comp.sys.mac.misc is 'Combined USB2 + firewire PCI card for G4' and it > started at 2/11/07... Many thanks for the comments and especially this last item. I'll visit that group and read up. Shudder - the thought of re-installing OS X for the upgrade is not appealing. Dang! And I just upgraded to 10.4.9! :-> Oh, well..... SignaturePhil Stripling | email to the replyto address is presumed The Civilized Explorer | spam and read later. email from this URL http://www.cieux.com/ | http://www.civex.com/ is read daily. > > My dual 1Gig G4 Mac was made before USB 2 came out and has only 1.1 > > ports. I bought a card with two external USB 2 ports and just stuck it [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > USB2/Firewire 400 card will do USB2 if I ever plug a USB2 device into > it... A footnote: I did a standard install of Tiger on my QuickSilver (which only has USB 1.1 built in), then added an OHCI/EHCI USB 2 card recently. I did not need to install any software - it just worked automatically (and yes, it is identified as "High Speed" in System Profiler, and it is faster than the built-in USB 1.1 ports). This wasn't a multifunction card - no Firewire or other oddities, just plain USB 2 with three external connectors and one internal connector. If you installed the operating system from a machine-specific CD/DVD rather than a retail one, it might end up with a limited system that is missing drivers for hardware that isn't available on that model. The retail Mac OS X CD installs a system which will boot on all supported computers, as does an "upgrade" version of the CD. It doesn't matter what type of system install you do (full, archive & install or erase & install) - it includes drivers for everything built into every supported Mac model. SignatureDavid Empson dempson@actrix.gen.nz > My dual 1Gig G4 Mac was made before USB 2 came out and has only 1.1 > ports. I bought a card with two external USB 2 ports and just stuck it [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > show up on the desktop. It does appear and is accessible using one of > the 1.1 ports. Have a look in System Profiler and see whether the card appears in the PCI section and/or the USB section. > What am I missing? Should I have some software with the card for the > Mac to see it? You need a USB card which contains the standard chipset, based on the EHCI specification. A card with proprietary chipset would need special drivers and they probably don't exist for the Mac. I inserted a cheap EHCI-complaint card into my dual 1 GHz QuickSilver 2002 and it works fine, except for the known problem that if some types of device are plugged into the card's USB ports, the computer will hang when trying to go to sleep. My iPod triggered this behaviour but my Apple Pro Mouse did not (but I might have just been lucky that time). I only use it for temporarily connecting devices for higher speed transfers, so this isn't a problem for me. SignatureDavid Empson dempson@actrix.gen.nz > My dual 1Gig G4 Mac was made before USB 2 came out and has only 1.1 > ports. I bought a card with two external USB 2 ports and just stuck it [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > What am I missing? Should I have some software with the card for the > Mac to see it? It's conceivable that there may be some cards for which that's true. It's also possible that the specific device you're trying to use needs a driver. What do you see under the USB heading in Apple System Profiler? Is the card acknowledged? Is the device? If the card doesn't register as a bus under USB, is it recognized at all under PCI cards? Greg > It's conceivable that there may be some cards for which that's true. > It's also possible that the specific device you're trying to use needs a > driver. What do you see under the USB heading in Apple System Profiler? > Is the card acknowledged? Is the device? If the card doesn't register as > a bus under USB, is it recognized at all under PCI cards? My thanks to David Empson and you for these suggestions. It appears to be the device (a Giga Vu Pro Evolution). Looking at System Profiler, the PCI card shows up, and under USB, the three ports show up. Oddly enough, if I check while the GVPE is attached, that shows up, too, as a high speed USB port. However, the GVPE doesn't mount. I have another USB2 device (HyperDrive HD80) which does mount properly, so now I'm off to Jobo for support on the GPVE. The GPVE works fine with the original 1.1 ports, but not the PCI card's 2.x ports. I assumed it would work with USB2. SignaturePhil Stripling | email to the replyto address is presumed The Civilized Explorer | spam and read later. email from this URL http://www.cieux.com/ | http://www.civex.com/ is read daily. > It appears to be the device (a Giga Vu Pro Evolution). Looking at > System Profiler, the PCI card shows up, and under USB, the three ports > show up. Anything listed in the Profiler as "USB Bus" is USB 1.1 speeds. If it is recognized as a USB 2.0 interface, you will also see a "USB High-Speed Bus" listing. > Oddly enough, if I check while the GVPE is attached, that shows up, > too, as a high speed USB port. However, the GVPE doesn't mount. I have [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > The GPVE works fine with the original 1.1 ports, but not the PCI card's > 2.x ports. I assumed it would work with USB2. It is a bit unusual for a USB 1.1 device to be incompatible with 2.0, but it has happened before. It may also be that your card is has flaky EHCI support but OK UHCI support. So a 1.1 device will work normally, but a 2.0 device will flake-out or fail altogether. This is what my first USB card (with the ALI chip) did. -- David > If it is recognized as a USB 2.0 interface, you will also see a "USB > High-Speed Bus" listing. Yes, they are shown as high speed. >SNIP< > It is a bit unusual for a USB 1.1 device to be incompatible with 2.0, > but it has happened before. Well, it was the device. After failing to get the firmware upgraded by following the directions in the manual, I emailed support and got a set of "clear" (and completely different) directions that worked. With the upgraded firmware, the device connects as a USB2 device. Whew! The firmware was 1.0.1.2 and is now 1.0.3. Uh ... I'm thinking I have some hazy recollection about buying anything that's Rev. 1.x, but I can't quite recall what my experience was. SignaturePhil Stripling | email to the replyto address is presumed The Civilized Explorer | spam and read later. email from this URL http://www.cieux.com/ | http://www.civex.com/ is read daily. > My dual 1Gig G4 Mac was made before USB 2 came out and has only 1.1 > ports. I bought a card with two external USB 2 ports and just stuck it > into the Mac. I had been told that I needed nothing else, that the Mac > came with drivers and such (I'm now on 10.4.9). This should be true, assuming your card has a compatible chipset. Supposedly, any EHCI-compliant card will work. In actual practice, some chipsets are more compliant than others. I originally tried putting a cheap card, with an ALI chipset in my dual 1GHz G4 PowerMac. It was a bit flaky on Mac OS 10.3, and didn't work at all when I upgraded to 10.4. (More accurately, USB 1.1 devices worked, but USB 2.0 devices failed.) The system logs indicated that data from the card was violating the USB specs. I removed that card and replaced ith with a Belkin card (using an NEC chip), and all problems went away. > I've connected a 2.x device to one of the ports, and the device doesn't > show up on the desktop. It does appear and is accessible using one of > the 1.1 ports. Sounds like you're seeing what I saw. If your card doesn't have an NEC chipset, I'd recommend replacing it with one that does. -- David > My dual 1Gig G4 Mac was made before USB 2 came out and has only 1.1 > ports. I bought a card with two external USB 2 ports and just stuck it [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > What am I missing? Should I have some software with the card for the > Mac to see it? I put a couple of different cards in my Sawtooth. Both worked as USB 2.0. But the first one would crash the system after sleeping it (or wake, I forget which). The second didn't crash it but simply disappears after sleep. I haven't found one that works okay following sleep. If I set Energy Saver to never sleep the computer then it works okay. So could it be that the computer was asleep anytime prior to using the port. SignatureClark Martin Redwood City, CA, USA Macintosh / Internet Consulting "I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway" |
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